This weekend sees a significant expansion in the stunning and sprawling annual three-day festival, Bushwick Open Studios, put together by the volunteer Arts in Bushwick organization.  In addition to the 677 shows on offer, some in labyrinthine studio complexes, others in storefronts and private dwellings around the eastern Brooklyn neighborhood, this year sees the launch of a new art fair in conjunction with the festival, one that promises the literal opposite of business as usual.

NEWD brings together artist collective, project spaces, nonprofits and artist-run galleries in a show sharing 7000 square feet of industrial space.  As befits its acronym, the fair strives for a new level of transparency.  Besides bringing collectors into less mediated contact with artists, NEWD is introducing “negotiated resale royalty agreements” with the sales that take place under its roof.  The event takes place at the 1896, an historic warehouse space at 592 Johnson Avenue close to the Jefferson Street L.

Participants in NEWD are naturally open for business in their own premises, too, over the weekend.  At 56 Bogart Street, for instance, hub of such galleries and alternative spaces as Momenta Art, NURTUREart, and Life on Mars, THEODORE:Art, the latest gallery incarnation of Soho veteran Stephanie Theodore, continues a sensational show of sculptor Joyce Robins that emphasizes her roots in painting—by actually including stunning early 2D works alongside her pigmented clay reliefs.  Upstairs from these galleries, meanwhile, are good old-fashioned open studios by individual practicing artists.  Check out luminous abstractionist Delfina Nahrgang,.

Another sculptor active since the 1970s, Paris- and New York-based Alain Kirili,  inaugurates splendid new premises of ArtHelix at 299 Meserole Street, near the Montrose Avenue L.  Describing Kirili’s new steel wire and rubber tubing drawing-in-space sculptures in the brochure accompanying this show, artcritical’s David Cohen detects “an almost fugue-like relationship between elements chasing and embracing each other like lovers.”

Cutting edge new media artists Man Bartlett and Carla Gannis are part of a five-person open studio at Studio 303 at 41 Varick Avenue.  While their work engages in literally splicing together traditional and innovative techniques and protocols, a group show with an emphasis on painting draws on splice as its organizational metaphor. MIXTAPE, curated by Sophia Alexandrov and Todd Bienvenu, draws a parallel between curatorial efforts and the making of a good party compilation.  Their show, at 195 Morgan Avenue, No. 4 Studio, brings together the likes of Katherine Bradford, Margrit Lewczuk, Gili Levy, Sangram Majumdar and Kyle Staver.

And talking of parties: Twenty-Three Artists From In and Around, in the garage at 386 Jefferson Street, which includes Paula DeLuccia, Lori Ellison, Lawrence Swan and Richard Timperio in their number, has an opening Friday sponsored by Hendrick’s Gin, as if such company weren’t sufficient guarantee of a wild time!

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For the third time in its five years history, the annual Bushwick Open Studios festival will be hit this weekend with a recurring mass transit nightmare, a shuttered L-train.  The L line on the MTA subway system is the lifeline from Bushwick to civilized points west, whether Williamsburg, Manhattan or – to adopt a Brooklyncentric, Saul Steinberg-style geography – the rest of the USA and the world. No L and Bushwick really is the bush—although artistically the neighborhood is increasingly self-sufficient.

And it isn’t just Bushwick’s artists and musicians who view their ‘hood as the new epicenter. Bushwick Open Studios is a major cultural event with statistics that speak for themselves.  The festival comprises over 380 shows in over 180 locations, all within a three square mile area, and many of these events are large studio complexes with dozens of presenting artists in each venue.  Based on prior years’ attendance, the organizers of the event, Arts in Bushwick, expect a turnout of over 10,000

The Metropolitan Transit Authority explains that it has little alternative to closing the L for summer weekends.  Because the 100 years old L is a two-track line the whole system has to close for the removal of its old signals system.  They can’t work at night for visibility issues, as a span of the line is above ground, nor in winter for the same reasons.  Working during the week is ruled out.

But the signals system between New York’s mass transit authority and its cultural organizations also needs to be upgraded.  A call is sent out to political leaders around a year ahead to ask of weekends when major events are planned; the appeal needs to be broader and the timing realistic.  So too should alternatives if the subway is shuttered: three shuttle buses and a spell on the J is not feasible.  (click here for Arts in Bushwick’s alternative alternatives.)

The mentality that subways only exist to take people from the outer boroughs to Manhattan to work is an anachronism: Manhattanites also need to get to Brooklyn – to see art.

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