56Bogart

56Bogart: Would you like to introduce yourself?

Amanda Browder: Yeah, sure. My name is Amanda Browder.

56B: And you’re a relative new-comer to New York?

AB: I moved out here because I wanted to live here and find out what it was all about. I grew up in the west and the west is very different from the east. I honestly was very scared of New York and didn’t know what to expect when I moved here. It was difficult for the first two years, but after a little while I settled in. I had a studio in Greenpoint, but had to move out. I found this place and moved in about a year ago.

56B: Where did you study?

AB: I went to undergrad at Beloit College and it was just a fluke. I was really bad at applying and Missoula is such a small and isolated town that I thought that I’d just go to the University of Montana, but my parents convinced me to apply somewhere else too. So I applied to Beloit College, got in and decided to go. Didn’t even visit it before I went, I just left. And after that I realized that I wanted to be an artist after being a math major for two years. I then went to the University of Wisconsin at Madison for graduate school. Again, I knew I would get in so that’s why I only applied there and it ended up being a great school. I taught in the grad program for two years. Right after grad school I moved to Chicago because I got a part time job teaching at the Art Institute of Chicago in the first year program and fibers department. That’s where I started [the] Bad At Sports [podcast] with my friends Duncan MacKenzie and Richard Holland. Then I decided to move to New York for a change.

56B: I was looking at your website and you write that you’re interested in the “transformative nature of materials.” I was wondering if you could speak on this a bit.  Your work is very tactile and you use very particular materials…

AB: Sure. I use fabric because it is a familiar thing that you would see at home and we don’t always relate it to contemporary art. Paint has the traditions in contemporary art or art history and fabric does too, but it also connects with the private space of the home. So, for me I always felt that the transformative nature of fabric is taking all of the awesome qualities of the fabric that we recognize, say, if we were going to a second-hand store and then using them in contemporary art sense. So, it is that high - low conversation of course, but, you know how people explain words, like they have have different definitions? Well I think of objects as having different definitions and whatever thing you place upon it or whatever everybody’s objective understanding of that object changes the meaning. So I combine different characteristics of certain fabrics. We understand the origins of the object because we understand the fabric as fabric and whatever object I’m constructing has its own meaning as well. And the conversation between these meanings is what interests me; the vibration and awkward conversation.
In Japan I built a giant cave. A lot of the fabric and detritus [I used] was donated by members of the local community and I liked that conceptual background as well; the conversation beyond the one between the material and the object constructed.

56B: Speaking of transformative materials and experiences, I find that some of the most transformative experiences are conversations. It doesn’t surprise me that you are interested in inspiring conversations, interacting with communities directly and, of course, Bad At Sports… conversations!

AB: Yea, that’s true. In Chicago a long time ago we had only one art magazine called the New Art Examiner. It was the only art magazine that was coming out of Chicago. It closed and we (Chicago) sort of lost our voice in the contemporary art world. So, Bad At Sports was in response to that. With Bad At Sports we wanted to create a conversational, relaxed environment while talking about art and we wanted to be able to say dumb words. I mean, all three of us went to grad school. We were smart people and it wasn’t as if we didn’t know what was going on, but we wanted to have recorded conversations where it was like you were having a beer with the artist and laughing and making jokes about stuff; making it funny and entertaining versus too serious and over thought.  And, yea, my work kind of connects that too.

56B: Talk to me about your palette; color seems vital to your work and your palette is consistently bright and fun.

AB: I just like bright colors! It is just part of the world that I enjoy. [My work] needs to be vibrant and exciting. The Rapunzel piece that I made, a huge waterfall of fabric coming out of my apartment, was in response to living in Chicago which is the coldest place in the world, colder than Montana. It is grey for a really long time. I took all of the fabric I had collected over five years, sewed it all together into one huge waterfall and threw it out my window. Kind of just like a release, like, “Oh my god, I need color in my life!”
One thing that was great about living in Montana was the connection with the earth. When you live in Missoula there are mountains everywhere around you. You have a comfortable understanding that there is me as a human and there is a larger scale of the earth that’s out there. One of the reasons that I make big work is to remind people of the intensity of the space that we live in, not be so insular, and that the bigger picture can be awe-inspiring.

56B: Has your practice changed at all since you moved to New York?

AB: I don’t know if it’s changed, but it progresses. I’ve noticed that my work is getting more complex and bigger. In Chicago I had a much smaller space. I think one thing I really love about New York, and that I didn’t expect when I moved here, is the openness that people have to either sharing spaces or helping out with projects. I think that a lot of people think that it is wildly difficult [here] and you can’t connect with people in a neighborhood, but I think the opposite. People are very open if you talk to the right people. Respect is very important, always giving back. For example, I cleaned a gymnasium in return for time to set up a piece. Not giving up on people, too. There is a family I worked with from Coney Island on a project a while ago and they are still donating fabric to me. We still keep in contact and I appreciate that. If you give people an opportunity to try something different it sometimes can be very positive.

Sean Alday interviews artist James George

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James George holding a victim from the Free Fall High Score game. Now available for your portable, droppable device.

JG: My name is James George and I am a media artist and computer programmer. I work mostly with computer graphics, open source software, and inter-activity in the realm of applying newer technology to making art.

56B: For how long?

JG: I’ve been using computers to make art since I was 8 years old. But I suppose doing it in the capacity that I’m doing it in now and the community that I’m a part of, I would say it’s been about three years. I moved to Brooklyn because I wanted to contribute to the scene here. There are a lot of people doing this kind of work here.

56B: I think the most interesting work of yours to me is the subway portrait series. You explained it to me, but I still don’t completely understand; how did you get the portraits?

JG: We took those portraits ourselves. That project was borne out of a cultural explosion that occurred when the Kinect camera came out. Microsoft released this video game controller that the open-source and hardware-hacking communities quickly re-appropriated to their needs. I’ve been interested in using code to generate images and explore new types of cinema or photography. So, up until that point I had been creating algorithms to generate images. I was excited to use that camera because it creates very lush and interesting 3-dimensional images of the world. The intention of the technology was to use it with interactive video games, but I was interested in the material as an image.

We took a DSLR still camera for higher resolution images and rubber-banded one of the Kinect Cameras to the bottom of it. My collaborator Alexander Porter was taking photos and had a computer in his backpack and I was controlling the software from a Bluetooth mouse. So when he would take a photograph, I would click the mouse and it would save images off the camera at the same time. Then we went back to stitch them together and line them up. Every photograph is like a video game level, in that you can view it from multiple angles, and so we visualized this data using our software to make these portraits of people standing on the subway.

I was interested in the subway locations because I had just read an article about the surveillance systems regarding this debacle between Lockheed Martin and the MTA. Basically, Lockheed Martin had promised to create almost a science-fiction style surveillance system and completely failed to deliver. It resulted in lawsuits and all these unused surveillance cameras on the subway system. The art was a playful reimagining of what it would look like to be perceived by machines. But also, because these cameras are coming out, to know this is the way these cameras perceive you. To me it’s important because I write software against these machines and I have the ability to extract the imagery from them, so contextualizing them and making art with them changes the way the public perceives that technology and may make them more comfortable with and aware of these things that are all around us.

56B: How do you feel personally about surveillance?

JG: I don’t think about it that much. I think that for people often think about surveillance first when they think of marrying art and technology. As in, “How does your art deal with surveillance?”

In the broader context of systems around us, I think open-source software and art-and-technology helps people to become more comfortable with surveillance. A lot of the cameras we use day to day were developed with surveillance and military purposes in mind because there’s a lot of research money there.

Being a media artist and working with technology, I want to take that and make it playful with room for human expression. Sharing it enables other people to reclaim this technological landscape back for the people.

56B: Do you think you’re really reclaiming it? You don’t have to be a Luddite to be disgusted with Google or Facebook, I ask because I think of those as the most powerful surveillance tools.

JG: I don’t think it’s about being disgusted by it. I think that you’re talking about is privacy.

56B: Well, a lot of surveillance borders on being an invasion of privacy.

JG: They are related. In a lot of ways, it’s a concern, but it’s not a focus of my work. I don’t find it inspiring to think about addressing privacy issues.

Personally, I do think about it a lot, but I’m of two opinions on it:

The bigger problem with privacy issues is that because everything has become public - It’s not that you can’t hide the things that you’d otherwise do surreptitiously, or the classic privacy war cry “How could you start a revolution if there’s no privacy?” – it’s more that it dilutes our behavior so that, because you know everything is being seen, you do things that are only acceptable in the public context. The problem is that you no longer do things that you’d like to hide, not than you can’t hide the things that you’d otherwise do.

The other thing is we’re all starting to lead more public lives. That affects your behavior in every way. Whatever you do, there are photographs being taken. You’re constantly aware that that information is going to come back and become part of your representation online. Which is becoming a more and more important part of you in your entirety.

56B: To go back to Google and Facebook for a minute, do you think that the notion of privacy and being tracked puts people in amorphous demographics more so than it actually affects individuals?

JG: I think algorithms in general have a way of doing that. A way of indexing your view of the world because it has to fit into a number of slots. As you become a set of metrics that this algorithm understands, and because that informs what is suggested to you, all these things we become actually dictates what we discover. So the act of discovery becomes limited to the perception of that algorithm of what we are. The furthering of narrowing oneself is self-fulfilling in a way because we become what we discover.

I could see that as a danger. But I think that those algorithms are also good in a way. They’re actually doing us a huge service in providing this way of thinking and supporting thought and discovery to searching, categorization and filtering. It’s about awareness.

For example, when you get an email from someone and then a bunch of targeted ads pop up around that. A lot people find that concerning, as in “You’re reading my email.” But they’re not, not in the sense of a person reading each email. The emails are just moving through these filters and those are pulling things out.

Sure, it’s a double-edge sword but everyone needs to learn a little bit about how software works. If for no other reason than to gain some intuition about what’s going on behind this magic surface.

56B: Do you promote open-source software because it allows people to learn directly and also mold what they’re learning about?

JG: Yeah, that’s one or two reasons among many. It serves two purposes, it creates community and allows individuals to achieve greater things because all the individuals are achieving things together and sharing them.

Then it also serves to put forth the notion that you can do it too. You could write a search engine if you wanted. These things aren’t handed to you from above. And open-source software promotes that mindset.

56B: Are you actually in control, or is that the illusion? Is it the human eye or the machine that dictates what is seen?

JG: [Laughs] You’re at the whim of what comes at you. It’s sort of an existential question right? Who’s really in control?

I just read a really good book that helps me think about these things. The book is “Towards the Philosophy of Photography” by Vilem Flusser. He’s a media arts theorist from the 80’s. In this book, he talks about cameras and photography. His philosophy is that the manufacturers give cameras to the people, so the cameras control the images and therefore the manufacturer is responsible for the images. The people taking the pictures are a mechanism in that because they are following the rules of the camera. They fulfill the “intended use” of the camera and the camera company makes up that “intended use”. In that sense, the camera controls the people.

But in the book he discusses experimental photographers who are breaking cameras in interesting ways and making something outside the “intended use”. So in that way, you are not controlled. Or, you are making room for human expression in a place that is otherwise controlled by these larger apparatuses and systems.

Of course, you are still responding to these systems. I can’t go mine ore and make the hardware from raw material, and I wouldn’t want to do that [laughs]. So, I am definitely controlled to a degree by what is out there, but I’m also not taking the technology at face value. I, and the open-source community, do re-appropriate the technology. If the public and everyday people take the same tack then that will be what influences the companies to create moldable interfaces and create changes in what directions technology takes.

In that way you can regain some sort of control and shift things toward what you think is useful.

56B: Do you put any stock in the notion of the singularity?

JG: Oh gosh [laughs] it’s funny, I just did an interview* with the media artist Golan Levin and he was asked exactly the same question.

My immediate response is to give the same response he gave. But I’ll say it in my own words.

I don’t believe in it in the sense that machines will exceed human intelligence and essentially destroy us. I think that what will happen is much more interesting.

Take Twitter for example, Twitter is as close to the singularity as we’ve ever seen, in the way in which it will actually happen; unless there actually is a big-bang-type of moment.

What’s happening is that humans are organizing themselves in much more complex, large-scale structures than we’ve ever seen before. So that results in a new system. It’s an incredibly complex system that’s an amalgamation of a lot of people fulfilling individualized roles in that system. It’s akin to the neuron to brain analogy, where each person on Twitter is becoming a conduit for input of information, feeding and receiving things that they’ve conditioned themselves to want to hear, and they consider themselves a contributor to. That information is going to other nodes that listen to them because they respect their opinion or curation or ideas or output.

So we are becoming channels for information where things move by jumping from node to node. It’s directed by decisions of the individuals, but on a larger scale it feeds the system that all this information is flowing through. I think that what ends up happening is as an individual you’re compelled through your own value system to continue that cycle. It’s rewarding in so many ways and especially in a social sense. We lock in and continue contributing because it feels greater than ourselves.

I think that the singularity will be more like that. When we are all interacting as a larger unit. It deemphasizes the importance of a single person in some ways, but it also makes each person feel more important.

56B: Would you consider that an evolution or a form of devolving?

JG: I don’t know…

56B: It sounds like what you are describing is that humans will act as an ant colony. That is, each ant leaves a trail of pheromones to let the others know where there’s food or if part of the bed needs rebuilding. It’s very decentralized, and I’m wondering if you think that humans are moving towards a decentralized thought pattern?

JG: Yes, I do. But I think that it’s something that has been happening for all of time. I think that many things from families to cities represent this. I also think of it more in terms of ecosystems than I do genetics, but in an evolutionary sense I don’t think that we’re changing that much. All of these things are happening within the capacity of the current brain and we’re not able to predict the evolutionary implications of this.

However, talking about culture, I think it is an upgrade. It’s something that we desire; on a deep level it’s very human.

I think that the risk is homogeneity. Ecosystems in isolation become unique, creating diversity, which is unquestionably the richness of life. So if we have this uniform thought system that the majority participates in, that thought system becomes more homogenous. Which would make the world less interesting to live in.

The challenge is: How do we have this system in which everyone is communicating, without drawing everyone to the same or similar conclusions?

How do we keep unique languages and cultures? We are losing a lot of culture as we used to know it, but you know what? We are gaining a lot of new types of culture, that are powered by a social strata decoupled from geographic locations. Maybe it’s a more natural fit, because it isn’t regulated by where you live. You’re given the ability to go find where things are happening anywhere in the world.

The openFrameworks community was just in Detroit for a conference. People were brought in from all over the world and they all contributed to this one thing, this concept. Being somewhere is still important, being in a room with someone, somewhere is still important, but the discovery of different culture can happen without that now also. The cultivation of fairly esoteric bits of culture can happen at a greater scale with that ability.

56B: What you’re saying reminds me of the scene in “Encounters at the End of the World” when Herzog says something like “The tree-huggers and whale-huggers have more sway on culture than the fact that one or more spoken languages die out everyday.”

As progress progresses, are we creating history faster than we can transmit it?

JG: Yeah.

For one thing, I do feel like we live in a digital dark age right now. The majority of the work that we are doing will be lost to time. I fear that people will look back and say, “There was some crazy stuff going on, but we don’t really know what they were doing.”

The evidence of the work, especially the media arts, disappears. I can’t find certain net-art projects that I love from four years ago, for reasons such as not having that version of a browser, or the site has been taken down. Because it exists only in that ephemeral state, it gets lost and you can’t retrieve it.

Not only do we lose knowledge of older history, we’re also failing to create history. It’s really scary.

I think that when our generation comes of old age and we’re dealing with the issues of the elder class, our issues are going to be self-preservation based. How do we archive these avatar versions of ourselves?

56B: Not only “how do we” but “do we archive these things?” Our generation is dealing with preservation issues right now. A lot of people can’t feed themselves.

JG: That’s a different kind of self-preservation.

56B: But maybe we are preparing ourselves for that future. It’s like what you just said; maybe we are creating new things without creating a history.

Many languages can’t be read to this day. [Some] People can read hieroglyphics because someone happened across a rock thousands of years after the culture that created them disappeared.

Meanwhile the Library of Alexandria housed thousands of years of accumulated knowledge and all it took was a group of angry people to run in there with torches a few times before the Egyptians essentially gave up on that.

JG: That becomes the mythology and folklore of our learned history. And we aren’t aware of the gaps in that history. We don’t know many amazing societies could have come and gone without leaving a trace. It’s sad and poignant but it’s good to talk about these things.

I know that lately I’ve felt very strong and focused on where I want my work to contribute, how it and I fight into the arts and technology community. But zooming out to these larger social issues, will be the next step. When you grow comfortable in the smaller thing, you can start applying what you’ve learned to the larger issues. And then you have to be confident in your manner of executing projects and talking about things. As well as testing the social relevance of what you’re doing. As you get older, you can possibly even make a difference in whatever your calling is.

[A few moments of silence ensue.]

56B: Ok, final question. I’m really curious: PC or Mac?

JG: I’ve become agnostic. I believe in choosing your tools for the ecosystem in which you are working, not on principal or preference.

*The interview, filmed by James on his Kinect Camera device.

Doris Guo speaks to Mallory Sustick of Plovgh (pronounced “plow”)

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56B: Tell me about Plovgh and what you do at Plovgh.

MS: Plovgh is basically a way farmers can connect directly with consumers. We’re building an online marketplace so it will be similar to what you might imagine an online farmer’s market to be. Farms post their harvest each week online and individuals or commercial vendors can go online and place orders. Do you know what a CSA is?

56B: Not really…

MS: It stands for Community Supported Agriculture, it’s another market outlet that farms use to reach, to directly connect with consumers. At the beginning of the season you pay an upfront fee and over the course of the season you get a box either each week or every other week of vegetables.

56B: I’ve heard of it but didn’t know what it was called.

MS: So, we’re similar to that in that we have these neighborhood pick up points. 56 Bogart is a pickup and we have a bunch of others in Brooklyn and one at the New School in West Village and one in Queens. But the difference is that Plovgh allows for more choice and flexibility in that you don’t pay that upfront fee, you can choose any of the vegetables from any of the farms. You can pick up at whatever neighborhood pickups you want and it doesn’t have to be everyweek. So if you go on vacation, you’re not committed.

And what I do at Plovgh is I handle their community-building and manage that part of it. Basically what that means is I work with the organizers that work for each pick up point and organize their community there. And I also work with the farms with Lizzie, who’s the founder. For the organizers, if someone identifies a spot they want to have a pickup or we have already identified that, then we find someone in the community. Normally someone that knows their community better than we do so they’re better at spreading the word about what Plovgh is and finding out ways to get people involved. And then for the farms, we have a huge database of different kinds of farms. Basically finding those farms that are ready to try or experiment with alternative markets. If maybe farmers markets or CSA isn’t really working for them or they’re ready to think beyond that.

56B: How long have you been working at Plovgh?

MS: I started as an intern in November 2011, so a little over a year.

56B: What brought Plovgh to 56 Bogart?

MS: We had our first “office” at Dekalb Market, that was where we first started our pickup points in November. Basically, we were there for two months, and before that we were doing the typical freelancer start-up coffee shop to coffee shop. We noticed that there was better communication and work was getting done better when we were working as a unit. We wanted to find a space where we could do that and also be in a community where people were doing different things and thinking forward and alternatively. We didn’t want to be around a lot of other start-ups just for the idea that that’s what we’re constantly doing everyday, is thinking that mindset. To be in an environment where there’s people doing all kinds of different things, it allows your perspective to be..

56B: …out of that world?

MS: Exactly, and it makes you look at things in a different way so it’s really interesting to be at 56 Bogart where there’s mostly artist spaces and studios, and we’re doing something in agriculture and food. But in the bigger picture I think it all ties together.

56B: How often do you interact with other people in the building?

MS: It’s a little secluded being on the third floor. We’re working on a way to have the pick up point be more accessible that everyone in the building can go to because being on the third floor-

56B: You have to come to the third floor to pickup?

MS: Yeah, right now. There’s that barrier because the door locks and all the floors are kind of divided when the doors aren’t open. But we’re definitely interested in collaborating. We’re doing some courses with one of the farms we work with and some of the pick up points like Brooklyn Brainery, we’re beginning to develop a curriculum for that and we wanted to start a series of talks and have them take place in each neighborhood. So, have one be even in our office and invite people in the neighborhood to have an open dialogue about a certain theme or subject.

56B: How often do you work with farmers?

MS: Every week. The couple of farms that are selling right now we speak with on a weekly basis. Lizzie is between New York and Mississippi right, she’s consulting some farms down there, which is really helpful for us because we learn from that experience. We do farm visits once or twice a month now. We’ve been out in Long Island, Hudson Valley and upstate New York. And last summer, we were in northern Iowa.

56B: Do farmers ever come here?

MS: One of the farms we work with in Hudson Valley come to the city sometimes. They’re two women that used to live in Brooklyn and they just took to farming so they’ve been farming for three years.

56B: Oh, interesting.

MS: Yeah, they’re pretty cool, so they come in. I think a lot of farms, or at least in Iowa, some of the farms are like ‘We’re happy to work with you but we really don’t want to go into the city.’ But I feel like in this neighborhood especially with Roberta’s around the corner and other start-ups beginning, there’s a lot of intersection. Like farms with urban communities which is really great.

56B: Is there anything you’d like readers to know?

MS: We really want to help build community in this neighborhood. Ideally, we  want to have a pickup point that’s similar to one in Greenpoint right now. It’s on Saturdays 12 - 2 and it’s really fun, there’s all these people from the neighborhood that come to pick up. We used to have one in a coffee shop and people would stick around and have coffee. We want to begin building that for this neighborhood and connect more with not only 56 Bogart but all of East Williamsburg/Bushwick area.

http://www.plovgh.com

Sean Alday speaks with building owner Ted Hovivian and building manager Adrienne Saccone. 

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56B: Let’s start with introductions.

TH: I’m Ted Hovivian and I am one of the two owners of the building.

AS: My name is Adrienne Saccone; I manage tenant/landlord relations.

56B: How long have you been the building manager?

AS: It’s been about a year and a half.

56B: How long have you owned the building?

TH: We bought the building in 1983. We’ve been here for quite a while and have seen the dramatic change from this being a very rough neighborhood to the change that comes with it being more gentrified. Especially when that refers to artists and art. When we bought the building, we bought it to move our manufacturing operation into it. But the neighborhood was so difficult that we opted not to.

56B: What kind of manufacturing?

TH: Office furniture. The attraction to the building was that the floor sizes were large, we had access to parking behind the building, and we had subway access directly across the street. It made sense for our employees to be able to get here easily, unfortunately we never used it for that purpose.

56B: Were you involved in the arts to any degree in the 80’s?

TH: No, we were strictly manufacturing. Though, I always had an interest in art and had the thought that I might want to have a gallery someday. [Smiles] We’ve finally done that.

56B: How long did it take to shift from a manufacturing centered building into an arts centered building?

TH: I guess we started the change in 1995, or ’96. We had manufacturers here from the time we bought the building. Manufacturing in the city has diminished to where there is very little left. Accordingly, we needed to make a shift to maintain an income with this building.

The art scene from the Northside was starting to get really crowded and overpriced. It also began to move this way, which gave us the perfect opportunity to begin the conversion. There were people moving from the city and from Williamsburg into Bushwick. But I think that the real exodus began in 2005 because there was a zoning change that permitted residential construction. That prompted a lot of change in the use of property there, which forced a lot of the artists out.

56B: Did the loft law expansion affect this building at all?

TH: No, not at all. We’ve never permitted living in the building.

56B: What was the first artistic operation that moved into the building?

TH: The first artists that moved in were actually on the second floor. Which I net-leased the entire floor to… I believe they were called Bart Space, and had the Brooklyn Fireproof Gallery. That seemed to be a good model for us and I decided to work with that. That was the introduction of arts to the building.

56B: I understand that there was a furniture company on the first floor for a time. When did the first floor start to take off in terms of galleries and art studios?

TH: Yes there was, that was about two and a half years ago.

AS: They were actually located on the first floor and in the sublevel. They moved out in December of 2010.

TH: Shortly after they moved out, Momenta Art started looking at the space. I worked very hard to give them as attractive a proposition as possible and they accepted.

56B: Were you familiar with Momenta because of their location in Williamsburg? They opened that location around the same time that you began the transition with this building.

TH: No I was not. They found us through a real estate broker. That was two years ago?

AS: They moved here in June of 2011.

56B: As the building manager, do you scout out new tenants, or do they mostly find you?

AS: It’s a combination of both.

56B: Do you have a criterion for what you allow in the building? In other words, do you have room for performance groups or are you mostly interested in art galleries and enterprises?

TH: Well, we don’t want production groups or music groups, because it becomes disruptive to everyone. In terms of production or manufacturing, we are very selective in what we want. Ultimately manufacturing will leave this building. We still have manufacturers here, but as the neighborhood changes and the rents are increasing, it will become increasingly difficult for the manufacturers to be able to afford space here. It’s kind of a catch-22: When we wanted manufacturing it wasn’t here. Now things have changed and we don’t want the manufacturing.

56B: Do you come to the art openings?

TH: Absolutely. We come to all of them so long as we’re in town. No question. I really enjoy seeing what is going on and how things are moving forward.

56B: What has been your favorite exhibition, both of you?

TH: Well, we’re very partial [laughing], the ones in the Bogart Salon.

56B: Of course. I did go to “Le Dejeuner Sans L’Herbe”, the life drawing event where the modeling was based on the Manet painting. Do you have anything to do with the programming for Bogart Salon?

TH: No, that’s being handled by Peter Hopkins. He has a much better understanding of the art world than I do. I’ve given him a lot of latitude in that respect as the gallery director.

56B: Does the building have a board of directors?

TH: No. There are two of us, my partner and myself.

56B: What are your thoughts about this blog, which is based on your building?

TH: Well, we have our own website and we’re getting to the point where we can start posting links to the articles being written about the building.

56B: What do you think is the relationship of the building to the greater Bushwick area?

TH: Because of it’s location, the closer it is on the L line, the more focus it has. I believe this is the 6^th stop on the L line into Brooklyn. The further out you go; I think there’s less focus on that.

AS: I think that it’s a great incubator for art. The range of spaces we offer is from very small studios to larger footprints. It gives people the ability to pursue what they want in the spaces that they want. For our tenants, we run the gamut from people in their 20’s to people in their 60’s.  All of them doing different types of art and focusing on their own niche, it’s interesting.

56B: What are your plans for the future of the building?

TH: At this time, my plans are still evolving as the neighborhood evolves. I will have to see how we will work in that community. I’m pleased with the direction that it’s going; having the artists here, both young and old, the galleries, the non-profits is probably the best thing that could have happened to us. We want to maintain that. With the way the neighborhood is changing, we’ll have to wait to see if we can work within the parameters of that. I’m a businessman with a real affinity for the arts. For example, just looking at the exhibition that you have here, there are pieces that conceptually I’d love to own. As Adrienne said, this is an incubator and we do weigh decisions as members of the community. First and foremost though, this is a business and we look at it from that standpoint.

56B: Well, what’s your favorite thing about running this business?

TH: It’s an activity that keeps me working and interested. It really keeps my energy level high.

AS: I enjoy meeting the different people and seeing the things that they can do. Sometimes I walk into a studio and I think, “Wow, this is something that someone dedicates their life to doing.” It’s very different than a business perspective. I find it extremely interesting.

56B: Did either of you attend the “Confronting Bushwick” panel at the Salon?

AS: Yes.

TH: Absolutely!

56B: What were your thoughts on that?

AS: I thought that the panel was interesting, but I was more interested the audience. The range of people was a lot like the building itself. The age range went from 20 to 65. During your typical Chelsea opening, the crowd won’t be as diverse. When you’re here on an opening night or at the Salon, there are a lot of mature people intermingling with younger people.

TH: I thought it went quite well. There was one point at which I was ready to comment from the audience and I didn’t. There’s a concern that Bushwick will become another Williamsburg and I strongly disagree with that notion. There are several things that are different here. The first thing is that I don’t expect the zoning change that occurred in Williamsburg to occur here. If it does it won’t happen for a long time.

The second thing is, the scale of Bushwick as compared to Williamsburg is totally different. The mix of buildings is vastly different. There is enough residential in this neighborhood that it will keep this neighborhood much more intact.

If there’s going to be a change, I don’t expect to see it for another 20 or 30 years. I’ve been through the SoHo change, East Village change, the Chelsea change and the Williamsburg change and I’m seeing what’s going on in Bushwick. Because of the landscape here, I see it totally different than what happened in the other neighborhoods. That’s where I differ with the concerns that people are having.

56B: Do you think that it has anything to do with the proximity to the water?

TH: Sure, Chelsea in particular, you had these vast buildings that were empty until the art galleries moved in. And once again, manufacturing is mostly gone in this city and consequently the buildings were empty. What do you do with 15 or 20 story buildings that have square block footprints? That doesn’t occur here in Bushwick. Williamsburg had smaller scale but similar buildings as SoHo and Chelsea. Much of the real estate became high-end residential. The scale of this neighborhood is totally different. I think that will be a determining factor in this neighborhood maintaining itself.