By Rebecca Simon

On a brisk December afternoon, Duneska Michel sits atop the roof of the Loom building in Bushwick, a studio-space converted textile mill. She traces over an outline of a female figure which she has already drawn in her sketchpad, and looks out across the water at the Manhattan skyline.

“Art is still alive here,” Michel states about the neighborhood as she places her pencil to the paper once more. “It’s everywhere.”

Michel, a 21-year-old art teacher specializing in ink and mixed media and Bushwick resident for 5 months, is among several other artists who chose to stay in Bushwick, for its vibrant arts scene, amid the rising cost of residential and studio space. As the price of rent is on the rise in the trendy area, talk of the artistic community moving elsewhere is on the rise as well.

Rent in Bushwick has steadily increased over the past few years due to the influx of artists and young people moving to the neighborhood. According to MNS’ Brooklyn Rental Market Report, the price of rent in the area increased a shocking 29.76 percent over just one month last year. Bushwick’s median rent for a one-bedroom apartment now stands at $2,100, according to streeteasy.com.

Some organizations like Norte Maar, a non-profit and collaborative project in the arts founded in 2004, see East New York, a neighborhood about four miles east of Bushwick’s farthest edge, as becoming the new artistic cultural center of Brooklyn. The organization recently relocated from Bushwick, near the Jefferson Street subway stop, to Cypress Hills, by the Crescent Street subway stop.

“We were simply priced out of Bushwick…Norte Maar needed to find an affordable live/work situation where we could continue our important work,” said Jason Andrew, the institution’s curator.

Andrew claims he sees the same potential in East New York that artists have seen in places like Bushwick and Williamsburg in the past. “East New York is a community which, like any other, can continue to develop its own unique cultural identity. It is a big neighborhood with many different ethnicities, religions, cultures. As a non-profit arts organization, we found a cultural niche in Bushwick, we now see that potential in East New York,” commented Andrew.

East New York does boast an abundance of affordable spaces. However, it may be too soon to write off Bushwick’s art scene altogether.

Bushwick is currently home to over 50 art galleries and alternative art spaces. Not to mention, the neighborhood also boasts several art groups, festivals, etc.

                                  Graffiti outside the Morgan Avenue L train stop.                                                                                     (Photo by Rebecca Simon)

A major neighborhood event is a three-day-long festival dubbed “Bushwick Open Studios,” where arts and culture come together in early June of each year. This event brings together Bushwick’s art community, along with tens of thousands of other visitors who are able to view local artists’ work in their actual studio spaces.

One of the most famous art galleries in the area is BogArt, located at 56 Bogart St., which is a building made entirely of studio loft spaces, which are rented out by different organizations, galleries, artists and non-profits alike. Each room provides sufficient space for artists to work on and showcase their projects for the public to see. Once each project is completed, artists display their work in bottom-floor galleries for anyone visiting the building to view and enjoy. Current exhibitions feature tales of New York’s past, evil desires of subliminal childhood messages, and even 75 years of one artist’s complete work.

“[BogArt] is a monumental thing for the art community here. It’s a place where art is created and shown off. Everyone should see it,” stated Jessica Sines, a local painter and BogArt spectator.

In addition, one of Bushwick’s most coveted artistic open-air galleries, the Bushwick Collective, located on St. Nicholas Avenue, is alive and well. This non-profit street gallery gives artists from around the world a chance to come to the neighborhood and paint the sides of buildings to showcase their creations to the public. This promotes the urban artistic genre of graffiti. Some current murals show images ranging from screenshots of Instagram posts to a man whose face is made entirely of flowers. The Bushwick Collective was created in May of 2012 and continues to provide a competitive outlet for artists today, making it an important piece of Bushwick’s art scene.

“Art isn’t leaving Bushwick; it’s going to change. It’ll become less raw and more relevant to pop culture,” said Michel, who feels Bushwick’s art scene is not threatened by the increase in rent prices. “It’ll be less of what people feel and more of what they want to see.”

Laura Messner, a 28-year-old design student agrees with Michel stating, “I don’t think the art scene is going to leave here. It’s already taken over completely. If anything, it’s only going to get stronger.”

Bushwick only recently began seeing overwhelming changes and gentrification, mostly due to the Bushwick Initiative, a program created in the early 2000s by the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development, which poured money and resources into the area to improve crime rates, housing and sanitation.

Since then, the neighborhood has seen gentrification in full effect, transforming industrial warehouses into loft buildings, run-down businesses into trendy cafés and bars and an overall cultural shift from predominantly Hispanics to young students and artists. A textile mill is converted to work and live-in art studios across the street from a garbage processing plant, while a manufacturing building is transformed into an organic grocery store.

                     Many factory buildings have been converted to lofts.                                                                     (Photo by Rebecca Simon)

“Before Bushwick was popular, it was people trying to escape the norms of Manhattan. They created their own community where they could do whatever they wanted. Now that it’s becoming more popular and there’s older people and more families, it won’t be as free as it once was, but art will still exist here,” said Michel.

Michel concluded stating, “Art will always exist here. Just go up on the roof and look at all the graffiti. People used to be so free here. Roofs don’t look like this in Manhattan. This place was made by and for art. It’ll change. But art can never leave this place.”