If you were looking for relatively inexpensive art this weekend and were willing to overlook a lot of sub-par material, both Fountain and Pool, two of the off-off-Broadway art fairs that pop up during Armory week in New York, might have been worth the challenge. Both events, despite their raw appearance and uneven quality, can be commended for at least having managed to weather the economic storm that has hit the art world particularly hard. (A hint to Fountain organizers, though: no matter how hard up for cash you are, you might want to tell staffers not to ask members of the press for a donation at the admissions desk.)

Visitors to Fountain entered via Pier 66 off W. 26th Street — unlike the Armory Show, this pier-based fair actually takes place on a boat — and came upon a grungy interior that organizers had done little to polish up. That could be forgiven if the work had been compelling enough, but alas, most of it failed to impress. The fair’s nine booths were overhung, and much of what was on view was quite forgettable. With a little luck and a lot of patience, though, collectors could find a few diamonds in the rough. New York’s Glowlab had a wall devoted to graphite, ink, and gouache-on-paper works by Roberto Mollá, priced at $2,400. None had sold as of this writing, but gallery founder Christina Ray said that one was on reserve. Mollá, who will have a solo show at Glowlab in May, creates minimal compositions in black and red that blend Manga-like figures with architectural elements on graph paper. The gallery had also sold several works by Mark Price, a member of the Philadelphia collective Space 1026, including the silkscreen In the Dirt (2007) for $600.

Ray, who is the co-organizer of the fair with Leo Kesting gallery, said she had seen “quite a few Asian visitors, lots of families, and kids. The venue is attractive because there is a lot to explore in the area.” According to Ray, Friday night’s opening reception saw 3,000 people partying it up.

One booth that certainly made an impact belonged to Brooklyn’s McCaig-Welles gallery, which featured a solo installation by Greg Haberny titled "The Donkey Party Game." The Connecticut-based former-actor-turned-artist — whose screen credits include Law and Order: Criminal Intent and NYPD Blue — went all out, installing an outsider-ish presentation of raw, illustrative, cartoony paintings and sculpture in just 24 hours. Haberny’s art comments on some of our country’s more deplorable problems: how we’ve been manipulated by big oil companies, the hypocrisy of religious extremism, and the quick conversion of the U.S. into an Orwellian nightmare. Prices ranged from under $100 for the smallest pieces to $8,000 for a large painting, and many of the less expensive work were said to have found buyers.

A few blocks away at the Wyndham Garden Hotel on 24th Street, the sixth edition of Pool catered to artists who do not have gallery representation, billing itself as a modern-day Salon des Refusés. The quality was uneven at best, and the concept of requiring artists to pay to exhibit their own work in a cramped hotel room felt distasteful, even if the experience itself was at times pleasingly intimate. A highlight was the work of Casey Roberts, whose elegant installation of framed paintings on paper wouldn’t have been out of place at one of the more established fairs. Roberts creates his work using the photomechanical cyanotype process, painting with a light sensitive medium and then exposing the result to sunlight to create a vibrant blue image, which he then embellishes with elements rendered in gouache. He reported selling four of his smaller works for $450 apiece. The larger works had not sold as of this writing, though they too were reasonably priced, at $3,500 to $4,400.

New York-based curator David Gibson of Article Projects (also a curator of the fair and a member of its host committee) offered a different format, packing two rooms in a salon-style setup. He said about 400 people had passed through during Friday night’s vernissage and although he hadn't yet sold anything, he mentioned that Richard Stewart of the now-defunct De Chiara/Stewart gallery had stopped by, as had a Colombian collector of Latin American art. The in-your-face sexuality of two of the larger works made quite an impression, especially since the fair's format essentially brought art into the bedroom, with some of the work simply laid out on the hotel beds: Mary Murphys brash pink painting of a woman with her legs spread, Woman on Sofa (2007), was going for $10,000, while Unlike a Virgin (2008), a photograph of a sculpture of a horse with an oversized vagina, by Gregory de la Haba, was priced at $3,800 in an edition of 5.

All in all, there was plenty to raise a discerning collector's eyebrow at both Fountain and Pool, but in a sea of mediocre work, there were still a few pearls to be found.