I recently dove back into BW, with the hopes of running a high magic campaign with a little bit of customization. It has turned into a giant project, largely because of how things are set up. I have BWGR, and that’s a bit sparse in terms of making up new spells/items. So I referred to the Magic Burner, but that seems to be outdated now?
So the simple question is, how should I go about doing some magic in this game in the modern era?
If you have the Codex I would recommend one of the magic systems in there. Art-Magic is pretty free form and seems to be the go to for most games. 
Honestly, I think Abstraction and Distillation (which seems to be what you’re alluding to) still work about right. The big issue is you’d want a way of getting extra dice for Abstractions to replace Spellweaver. It’s an opportunity for some fun world-buiilding: Specific foci for various spell facets, places of power where one can meditate and attune oneself to elemental forces, special traits or training skills – and of course FoRKs from specific wises. Tying those dice to pieces of the game-world can be very enriching.
Personally, I’m not a fan of Art Magic; it’s too good and too broad.