Bushwick artists let visitors into their studios. Above, Deborah Brown’s studio from last year’s BOS. — Photo by Anna D’Agrosa

The beginning of summer in Bushwick means only one thing for neighborhood artists: time to open their worlds to the public for the neighborhood’s Bushwick Open Studios festival.

Bushwick’s largest organized event, with 308 individual art spaces registered over the weekend-long event, takes place June 4 through June 6.

The all-volunteer organization Arts in Bushwick keeps chugging along, organizing its festival for the fourth time this summer. Its core mission of providing an opportunity for the neighborhood’s artists to show their work simultaneously, in any manner they see fit, for a vast and curious audience, with little control over either hasn’t changed much over the past four years.

The festival doesn’t make stars out of anyone — not yet anyway, though sometimes it leads to sales if an artist is offering. Instead, the mix of overwhelming artistic content spread out over geographic boundaries gives the festival its adventurous, if exhausting, feel, where must-see exhibitions spread by word of mouth.

This year, AiB organizers are blogging online about studio visits and leaving breathless tweets on their website, throughout the weekend, so it may pay to bring your phone along and check artsinbushwick.org to see what all the fuss is about. BushwickBK will also offer some staff picks as a preview, and as in years past, review several of the studios we found compelling.

As a festival that provides a platform for artists to show their work, Arts in Bushwick has largely been successful. Crowds have been coming, despite 100-degree weather in 2008 and transportation troubles on the L-train in 2009, and the number of participating artists continues to grow; this year, artists as far out as Lorimer Street in Williamsburg and near Cooper Park in far-southeast Greenpoint are participating.

What has been more difficult is AiB’s stated intention of engaging the greater Bushwick community — connecting with Chelsea has been easier than reaching out to Bushwick’s schools, seniors, and other residents.

Much of that interaction has taken place quietly through projects such as Moviehouse’s collaboration with Make the Road NY‘s youth filmmakers, Storefront’s gallery show featuring children from Audrey Johnson Day Care Center and Monica Salazar’s efforts at Most Holy Trinity.

More members of the arts community have joined Community Board Four, including Arts in Bushwick’s Laura Braslow, who wants to launch an Arts Committee at the board level to reach Bushwick’s varied communities (a panel at Lumenhouse Saturday at 1 PM about the future of Bushwick will address more of these cross-interactions).

Less difficult has been attracting media attention and notice from the city’s art critics.

In 2008, the New York Times‘ Roberta Smith and New York Magazine‘s Jerry Saltz visited several Bushwick galleries including English Kills, Norte Maar, and Pocket Utopia. The Washington Post was sniffing around Ad Hoc Art and Lumenhouse at the same time too. Meanwhile, NURTURE Art and Factory Fresh, two of the older gallery spaces in the neighborhood, have been attracting a steady trickle of publicity from mainstream news and specialized art publications. Though two Bushwick spaces have since closed and a third reinvented itself by adding a new annex, these institutions are clearly on the industry’s radar.

Another series of articles that appeared last year touted the cultural trendiness of curating, which Arts in Bushwick fosters in all three of its festivals. This year, the do-it-yourself art scene received some nods, as L Magazine ran a long profile of new arts spaces in Bushwick, highlighting Storefront, Sugar, English Kills, and Famous Accountants, whose tag sale of cult icon Genesis P-Orridge‘s belongings attracted attention beyond the art world.

On Friday, the Times will be printing an article on Bushwick Open Studios — focusing on art parties (because there ain’t no party like a Bushwick party) — while The Huffington Post, Brooklyn Paper, Brooklyn Eagle, and The New Yorker listed the event.

It is uncertain whether this will persuade art critics and Manhattan gallery directors to make the trek to Bushwick this year to look at some up-and-coming (and cheap!) artistic talent. Norte Maar’s Jason Andrew and Storefront’s Deborah Brown should bring in a number of friends with professional ties to galleries and art schools, while AiB’s Steve Weintraub, Gallery Manager at Pavel Zoubok, has been spreading the word among nearby galleries.

Perhaps in future festivals a shuttle bus, similar to the one that the Williamsburg Gallery Association employed during Armory Weekend, may be an effective means of bringing Chelsea gallery directors to Bushwick.

Still, curators and museum directors would be wise to reread Roberta Smith’s February article lashing into New York’s museums for providing too much “post-minimalist” art that is “squeaky-clean, well-made, intellectually decorous takes on that unruly early ’70s mix of Conceptual, Process, Performance, installation and language-based art.”

“What’s missing is art that seems made by one person out of intense personal necessity, often by hand. A lot but not all of this kind of work is painting, which seems to be becoming the art medium that dare not speak its name where museums are concerned,” said Smith.

City curators take note. If you are looking for some of this, and are prepared to hunt around for it, come visit Bushwick this weekend. The rest of us will just be checking out our neighbors’ art, work, and sweet lofts.