“Ask about my art, not my rent” reads the sign posted at the door to Edwin Gonzalez’s apartment on Third Avenue and East 134th Street.

As Gonzalez pours wine and fixes lunch for friends and visitors who wander in for the third annual Mott Haven Open Artist Studio Tour, Melissa Calderon, one of the artists displaying paintings, photographs and sculpture in Gonzalez’s studio, explains the sign. “Last year people kept asking ‘What do you pay?’” she says.

This year they hoped the art alone would be the center of attention, but in a place like Mott Haven, the conversation inevitably turns to the neighborhood itself.

Calderon – who has a solo show in June at the Longwood Art Gallery at Hostos Community College – used to have a studio of her own in Mott Haven. She had to move to Norwood when the rents shot up.

“Artists come here for a year or two and have to leave,” she laments. “There is a history that is totally gone, but those of us who remember hold the torch.”

Despite the rising cost of space in the area, Mott Haven remains an attractive place for artists to work, as evidenced by the many studios open during the May 2nd tour put together by the Bronx Council on the Arts. The Bronx Culture Trolley ferried visitors to more than 15 studios and galleries.

Gonzalez, whose work depicts mythological figures like fairies, points out what makes the area so attractive to artists: “There are less distractions than places like Williamsburg, which I appreciate.”
“If you are a Bronx artist,” agrees Calderon, “you are here because you’re working – not because there is a scene here.”

The comparisons and contrasts to Williamsburg continue a couple of blocks away in the shared studio of the newlywed artists Darcy Dahl and Beth Brideau, above the Bruckner Bar and Grill.
“I wanted a nice quiet spot that’s not Williamsburg,” says Brideau. “On Sunday it’s quiet here.”

At the same time, Brideau – who has been working in the studio for five years on sculptures based on topographical images of forests, and who has a piece on display at the Museum of Modern Art– sees the other side of the coin: once a neighborhood becomes “this hip place where you’ve got to be,” she warns, “they raise the rents and then no one can live here.”

In a way, Dahl’s paintings reflect the changing neighborhood. He says his pieces are never finished, and he constantly adds new colors and shapes to them. He also projects videos with abstract images in pulsating kaleidoscopic loops, as in the three-month show he had at the Bronx Museum of Art.

A Dahl piece – like the neighborhood where he created it – never looks the same as it did the last time you saw it. “Everything has to do with context and the situation of the moment,” he says.
For this couple, the situation of the moment led them to begin to share their tiny studio space when they got married a year ago. They could no longer afford their own separate work spaces –even in the South Bronx.

Gerhard Frommel, an Austrian artist who has been in New York for eight years, had a hard time finding a place he could afford anywhere in the city. “The spaces I was offered as art studios in Mott Haven were more expensive than Manhattan,” he exclaims. “People are really greedy here.”

After two years of searching, Frommel finally walked up to some ironworkers to ask if they knew of any affordable work space. They pointed him toward a large brick warehouse near the mouth of the Third Avenue Bridge, where, in a piano repair shop, he created a tiny studio reached by a meandering path outlined by hundreds of dust-collecting and broken pianos.

“I didn’t find the space, the space found me,” he says, as he shows visitors his technique for mixing the paints he uses for his abstract works.

Up the street, Francisco Vallejo and Louis Nieves – two artists from Hunts Point – look up from the easels they have set up on the sidewalk.

“SoHo is no longer the sole owner of the art scene,” says Vallejo. The South Bronx art community, he says, has “been here a while, but it hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves.”

He acknowledges the double-edged sword of getting that attention however, noting, “It’s gonna displace people.”

“It’s the beginning of the end,” Nieves agrees. “Gentrification is coming.”

But Carey Clark, visual arts director at The Point Community Development Corporation in Hunts Point and a Mott Haven resident who also opened her studio for the day, says it’s more complicated than that. She argues that real estate speculators, not artists, cause displacement. The only fault she finds with artists is their tendency to keep to themselves.

“Artists get the label of the first wave of gentrifiers because they don’t get involved in the communities they work in enough,” she says.

Back at the Bruckner Bar and Grill, in a gallery behind the bar, two visiting artists from the North Bronx also try to wrap their heads around what is happening in Mott Haven.

Ira Merritt and Aaron Olshan, from Amalgamated Houses in Van Cortland Village, have had their work on display in Mott Haven since March. They were surprised by what they found.
“It used to be rougher here – let’s put it that way,” says Merritt.

Still, he added, the reputation of the South Bronx hasn’t caught up with reality. When we had our opening, a lot of people we thought would come stayed away,” says Merritt with a note of disappointment in his voice.

It is tucked away in a dark jazz café on the corner of Alexander Avenue, up a 5-floor walk-up through a narrow apartment or in a corner restaurant hidden under the cement overpass of a major expressway.

“The arts in the South Bronx are hidden. If you don’t hear about it by word of mouth you miss out on an experience,” said Lourdes Hernandez-Cordero, 36, as she stood by her husband’s photo exhibit in the Pregones Theater lobby on Walton Avenue.

The South Bronx has blossomed into a unique artistic destination in recent years, with small theaters, galleries and alternative art spaces appearing in remote streets and apartments. The once barren warehouses in Mott Haven are drawing a generation of young artists seeking low rent and generous space.

Pejro Martin, a metal welder and Ira Merritt, a photographer and print maker, stopped by The Blue Bedroom Project on a recent Saturday, interested in finding exhibition space in Mott Haven. The  alternative art space caused a stir last year in the local art community when artist Blanka Amezcua converted her bedroom into a mixed media art space.

The small bedroom is enclosed by curtain in the doorway. Visitors crowd along the walls to watch videos projected on Amezcua’s window. They wander in and out of the stuffy room towards a table laden with crackers, hummus, wine and juice. Amezcua stands near the door greeting and bidding farewell to the constant stream of guests entering the intimate space.

Martin was visiting his friend, videographer Damali Abrams, the featured artist at The Blue Bedroom Project in March.  Although Martin has exhibited his metal sculptures in SoHo, he has come to the South Bronx seeking new and undiscovered territory.

“The Bronx is a forgotten borough. People visit it for Yankee Stadium and leave,” Martin said. “You take a look at this area and there really is much to see.”

Martin thinks the growing art world in the neighborhood is a positive change.

“Everyone knows SoHo. Hopefully people will see this and the word will spread like wild fire,” he said.

Italian artist Vittorio Ottavioni turned his back on SoHo. A 5-floor walkup apartment is his new artistic stomping ground.

Visitors who dropped by to view the Anti-SoBro art show he curated, surrounded him as he said. “I do not advertise my art in SoHo, Williamsburg, or Chelsea. I want the focus to be on my art and not of me.”

Ottavioni commanded the room as he spouted his disdain for New York’s mainstream artistic destinations. He avoided the glare of photo lenses and intrusive questions from the visitors.

“Who does he think we are: CIA?” said Vincent Beltron, a one-time Mott Haven resident.

The neighborhood has changed a lot since he lived there, Beltron, 51, acknowledged.

Some things, however, never change. The former bus driver looks forward to dusty summer parties held on construction lots by the Harlem River, a pastime only true locals know about, where illegal pina coladas and tortillas are sold from car trunks,.

“This is all new to me though,” Beltron said as he walked away from Otavioni and his elaborate speech. “I seen the little art stores, but I never know this exists.”

Since the varying art spaces can be hard to locate for the unknowing tourist or longtime resident, the Bronx Council of the Arts runs two monthly tours on the Bronx Culture Trolley. A school bus converted to look like a turn of the century trolley, it loops around Mott Haven and parts of Highbridge and Hunts Point, dropping off dozens of tourists at each location.

Hear the sounds of the Bronx Cultural Trolley

Dom Darby, 23, rode the trolley for the first time with her sister Briana, 9, on its inaugural Saturday run.

The Darbys live in the Paterson Housing Project near the Blue Bedroom. Dom recalls  looking out her window and seeing the bright red vehicle roaming the streets.

“It was so random. I wondered why do they have that old timey trolley wandering around?” she said.

Darby stumbled across the Blue Bedroom on her way to library. A sandwich board advertising the project drew her attention.

“It’s so interesting and unique. A gallery in someone’s bedroom,” Darby said.

The galleries are a great way to bring positive attention to the neighborhood, she said, “I really wasn’t aware of all this.”

A band played live music on the sidewalk outside of the Alexander Café near Bruckner Boulevard. Couples stopped by for a glass of wine or a beer from the Café’s varied selection. Aida Vega, 81, Julia Torres, 82 and Maria Teresa Emeric danced on the street corner while they waited for the trolley to make its final loop of the day.

All three grew up and spent most of their adult lives in Mott Haven. They were there when Tito Puente and Celia Cruz performed in the neighborhood. And they saw the theaters burning in the devastation of the South Bronx.

“Things have changed here, but they are getting better,” Torres said.

A version of this story appeared in the Spring 2009 issue of the Mott Haven Herald.