A Bushwick Kid at Bushwick Open Studios
During my first visit to the annual event, I found towering paintings that explore our inner child, diasporic tributes to Filipina culture, and light-filled portraits of an artist's trans community.
Bushwick, the place I’ve called home since I was born, wasn’t always known for being the cultural art hub that some consider it today. Secretly, I avoided Bushwick Open Studios for some time because it never felt like it was for us. Not to mention, my idea of a studio in Bushwick was a small nook my mom carved out for me in our living room next to the TV in the railroad-style apartment she raised me in. This year was my first time attending the festivities, and I discovered works that challenged my assumptions.
The studio building at 1717 Troutman was my first stop. I was a little nervous walking in: It looked and smelled just like the building that housed a sweater factory my mom used to work in when I was growing up. Climbing up the stairs to the longest hallway I’ve ever seen, I walked past one of the open doors into a studio filled with large figurative paintings by Bobby K. Hill, an artist from Harlem. Hill told me about his practice and how his mixed-media works — eight-foot-tall canvases of figures holding small versions of themselves in nurturing, caring gestures — revolve around the idea of the inner child. We spoke about being native New Yorkers as we paced around his towering paintings. Every corner of the room was splashed with paint.
Next, I visited the studio of Taha Clayton from Toronto, Canada, who told me he has been making art in Bushwick for 10 years. His paintings and sculptures tell the story of the United States in the 1930s through the ’50s using photographs he takes of people he knows. The work that attracted my attention portrayed a finely dressed man walking by two water fountains with the words “White Only” and “The People,” a searing image of segregation experienced by Black people in America.
Down the hall, Patricia Baloyo Vanegas displayed her colorful tributes to Filipina culture from a diasporic lens. Born in Queens, Vanegas traveled to the Philippines for the first time as an adult and photographed the Panay Bukidnon people from her family’s native island. Using those images and her experience growing up in New York, she examines life from both perspectives through oil paintings and photographs.
