Since this is my final art feature to appear in the print format of The L Magazine, it might have provided me with a meaningful platform to discuss the recent past tense of art in our fine city, with a likely focus on Brooklyn. Or it might have been a good place to tease out some conjectural notions about what the more-or-less near future might hold for art making, art showing, art supporting—and sure, art writing—around these parts. But looking back or forward right now in such contexts, however potentially meaningful or important, can lead one to worry, at least a fair bit, about the present, as our town’s rampant march into unaffordability seems now to resound louder than ever. I’m not exactly convinced, to be sure, that this march will continue its allegedly inevitable, indefinite stomp. It could march right off a bridge, for instance. We have several truly handsome ones in our environs, after all, and the march’s crashing splash therefrom would likely be a welcome noise for the great majority of us who live and work here—and who would like to keep doing so without constantly crafting new methods of wriggling away, one lease at a time, from real estate’s omnivalent, at times truly arbitrary grip. For the record, I’m not saying that anyone should be drowned. It would be great, though, if the thunderous din of ‘development’ were at least drowned out for a while. I reckon plenty of you out there might echo such sentiments.
