Saturday night I stopped by the opening of Eric Johnston’s solo show, “Silent Snow, Secret Snow” at DRWR Project Space. DRWR is another of Bushwick’s living room galleries, and an incredibly nice one at that (apparently diy art spaces are easier to keep clean than DIY show spaces). To me there is something really comforting about attending an event and realizing that you are sitting beneath someone’s loft bed; a literal reminder that there are people alive behind this thing and that they believe in what they are doing enough to open up their home to make it happen.

DRWR is the perfect fit for the collection of imaginative architectural drawings that make up “Silent Snow”. The way in which Johnston creates fictive locations and hybrid structures, buildings enmeshed with the organic elements of their surroundings, would only seem at home in a dual purpose space like DRWR.

Johnston’s work presents beautifully realized scenes from speculative worlds; the isolated mechanical monolith of a sitting room displayed in Eldritch Fantasies, the biomorphic rock and tree formation of Tabernacle 02, and the bio-mechanized tree spider of Tabernacle 01, all distort the normal context of the drawings’ objects to fantastical effect.

The “Silent Snow” opening, the gallery’s first, was well attended and refreshments and the bar well stocked (cupcakes, Tecate, Magic Hat!) DRWR, in its current incarnation, was started by Bobby Genalo and Jesse Walker, and has thus far been largely a project amongst friends (Walker and Johnston met when both were at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA)). Though Walker says they have begun to take submissions for future shows, looking to provide a place for local artists to hold solo exhibitions.

“Silent Snow, Secret Snow” runs through February 21st, by appointment only. Contact Bobby Genalo at bobbygenalo@gmail.com.