This artist is hosting an exhibition in her apartment windows

On Greenpoint’s bustling Manhattan Avenue (between Meserole Street and Norman Avenue), a new exhibition has sprouted up in the windows of a yellow apartment building. The project, titled Between the Windows, is an initiative by artist-curator and resident, Vanessa Albury that launched as of this morning. 

Asbury has invited artists for a three-week long residency to casually display in her apartment windows. The first up is David B. Smith, who created an abstract shower curtain. Future mediums will include sculpture, photography and more. 

“I started this because I was looking around my apartment and thinking about all the amazing work I have on my walls and realizing that not everyone has something like that to look at right now,” says Albury in an interview with Time Out New York. Yes, it's a way to keep herself busy while she's stuck inside, but it also serves a need for the neighborhood. 

“A lot of my friends were supposed to have art shows right now before all of this happened. And virtual galleries just aren't the same. We [as a society] haven’t figured out a way to make it come anywhere near the real experience,” she says. "Virtual gallery shows are sort of like if you got into Harvard, but now you’re taking your classes online. It’s not the same."  

But making Between the Windows a public-facing project that's available to view for free as people shuffle down the avenue to go to the post office or head for groceries felt more suited to meet the demand for art while following the boundaries of social distancing. 

Though located on the fourth-floor, her neighbor below also offered up his downstairs window for the project. She hopes to continue expanding throughout her whole building, if it makes sense for the specific artist's work at hand and her other neighbors are interested.

"[The artists are] creating these installations for Between the Windows from what they already have in their homes and studios. There's something freeing about this moment of pause where we are all more engaged with our current possession and this type of installation that's coming off the pristine white walls and into the visually textured public space. For example, we took shower curtains that David has made over the years as experiments and created an outdoor installation with them," she says. 

The current artworks on display can be purchased here, with 30 percent of proceeds going to another public art project that Albury was working on before the city went on pause. Prior to launching Between the Windows, her focus was on Coral Projects, the "first underwater art exhibition permanently installed on a regenerating coral reef from 100% ocean friendly materials" taking place in Jamaica.  

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