In 25 years, the neighborhoods along Brooklyn’s waterfront have traded an image of crime and economic desolation for one of trendy restaurants, killer views, and rapidly rising real estate prices. But the artists are standing their ground — at least for now.

The Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition’s 25th Annual Outdoor Sculpture Show, which opens tomorrow in Empire Fulton Ferry State Park and Brooklyn Bridge Park, is called “Still Flying.” One of the curators of the show, Ursula Clark, said she intended the name both to evoke themes of open air and movement and to commemorate BWAC’s anniversary.

Started in 1982 by artists living and working in what is now called DUMBO, BWAC (pronounced BEwack) puts on four exhibitions a year, all with volunteer labor by the artists themselves. Except for the sculpture show, the other exhibitions, held in BWAC’s 25,000-square-foot donated space in Red Hook, are uncurated, meaning anyone who signs up in time can have a space. In a city where it’s increasingly hard for emerging artists to get a foothold, BWAC’s low-key, democratic atmosphere represents something unusual.

BWAC “has been great in bringing the real general public closer to art,” a painter, Mary Creede, said. “All kinds of people come who wouldn’t normally — people who might be intimidated by a gallery situation — and I love that. I sell a lot of work at BWAC, and I like who’s buying the work, because people seem genuinely excited.”

Unlike the other shows, the sculpture show solicits submissions from artists not just from Brooklyn, but from around the country, and sometimes the world. Several of the works do evoke themes of flying: a welded-steeland-stained-glass dragonfly, by Tammy Bickel of San Francisco; a scrap-metal bird, by Doug Makemson of Athens, Ga.; a 6-foot, plywood “paper airplane” with its nose crumpled, by Alex Neroulias of the Bronx.

On BWAC’s 25th birthday, one pressing question is how long the group can maintain its primary home in Red Hook, where real estate values are rising quickly. In the 1980s, when BWAC was located in DUMBO, it exhibited in warehouse spaces donated by Joshua Guttman and David Walentas. Its Red Hook space, at 499 Van Brunt St., is donated by Greg O’Connell, a former policeman who now owns dozens of buildings in the neighborhood, including the Fairway building. Mr. O’Connell says he believes that artists add to the mix in the neighborhood. But as rents rise, will he continue to be able to justify giving BWAC 25,000 square feet for free?

Artists who live in the area are worried about how long they can stay, as well as about changes that are stripping Red Hook of some of the features that originally attracted them there. As a result of the destruction or threatened destruction of several historic industrial sites, the National Trust for Historic Preservation earlier this month declared the waterfront one of the country’s 11 most endangered sites.

A photographer and activist, Carolina Salguero, said she was particularly sad about the loss of places she used to photograph, such as the Graving Dock, which is being paved over to be a parking lot for the new IKEA. “I lost my muse,” Ms. Salguero said.

She is hardly giving up on the neighborhood, though. She has founded a non-profit, called Port-Side NewYork, which aims, according to its Web site, to “breathe life into the relationship between landside communities and the maritime sector — to the advantage of both.” The first major cultural event sponsored by PortSide will take place in September: The Vertical Player Repertory Opera, a company that stages operas in alternative settings, will perform Puccini’s “Il Tabarro,” a one-act opera set on a barge in the Seine, on a retired oil tanker docked at the Red Hook Marine Terminal.

The president of BWAC, John Strohbeen, was wry about Red Hook’s transformation. “When I moved in you would find burned-out cars out in front of my building,” he said. “Now you can’t find a parking space.” He lives in a building of live-work artist lofts, owned by Mr. O’Connell. His business, a speaker factory, is also in the neighborhood.

Ms. Creede, the painter, also owns a business in Red Hook, in another building owned by Mr. O’Connell. “We’re fortunate in who our landlord is,” Ms. Creede said, noting Mr. O’Connell’s interest in helping small businesses stay in the neighborhood. “Otherwise, we might be in Pennsylvania.”

Asked whether she appreciates the amenities that have come to the neighborhood in recent years — restaurants like The Good Fork and 360, the requisite cupcake-purveying bakery, Baked — Ms. Creede said no. “A lot of the small family businesses that were really charming are gone.”

Still, the current economic vitality of the neighborhood is hard to deny. The building at 499 Van Brunt St., vacant when Mr. O’Connell bought it, is now full of tenants, from carpentry shops to architecture firms to the offices of Blue Man Productions.

As Mr. O’Connell readily acknowledges, BWAC itself contributed to the neighborhood’s image makeover, attracting thousands of people to its exhibitions. “It brought more people to the waterfront than ever would havecome before, because they were afraid,” Mr. O’Connell said.

Even as Red Hook approaches to the point in the gentrification curve where bankers replace the bohemians, it still doesn’t have a recognizable “scene” in the way that Williamsburg did in the 1990s, Ms. Salguero said. In recent years, she has been stopped on the street by out-of-towners who, misled by press accounts, come looking for galleries (of which there are only a few)or artists sitting in cafés, wearing crazy clothes. But the artists in RedHook never cared about “all those signifiers,” Ms. Salguero said. “We’re very low on the purple hair index.”