Fine Art Friday: An Ode to Brooklyn’s Wayfarers

View of Wayfarers’ gallery, via Craig Hein. 

Recently, through the kindness of inventive painter Jillian Rose, I had the good fortune to participate in a group exhibition at Bushwick’s Wayfarers. This piece is neither about that show (now on view, until February 25th!), nor is this a shameless piece of tiny self-promotion. It is instead a post wherein I will discuss HOW GREAT I think this place, and places like it, are. 

If we’re going to talk mission statements…

Wayfarers is a Brooklyn-based studio program that offers qualifying members private studios, access to a woodshop and a solo-show (or the option to curate a show) in the on-site gallery.  We also host critiques, drawing parties, group shows, live music, experimental performances, puppetry events, readings, workshops and video screenings. 

But it is much more than that! It is congenial, it is a powerhouse of creativity and collaboration, it is at once polished, professional, and DIY. My (to this point) limited experience with the studio/gallery space is among the aspects of the NYC art scene helping to soothe my jaded art heart. 

It’s difficult to describe the rush of appreciation I felt when I re-remembered that inventive places like this exist, far from the clinical big money art machine that rages elsewhere. So, I will say it in images, a collection of my favorites from the space’s Tumblr. 

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The floor, it gleams. 

Setting up for an evening of music + art. 

A reported selection of seven projectors. 

Wayfarers: a wonderful place to be. 

Behind and under the gallery space show above, clusters of miniature houses are being built, salt crystals are being grown, paint is being splattered and smeared, figures are being rendered in pencil, wood is cut, and from all these things, art is formed. People are making things, and helping each other. And the art is actually good. 

Go to this place. 

Wayfarers’ gallery is open Saturdays and Sundays from 12-6 pm, by appointment or by chance. 1109 Dekalb Avenue, Brooklyn, NY. 

(Erica Quinn is a photographer/sad girl poet/cat blogger currently pursuing her MFA at the Pratt Institute and otherwise writing for Finch and Ada.)