Hotels Make “Room” for the Arts in Queens

The QCA ArtHotel Residency, is a new program of Queens Council on the Arts in partnership with The Paper Factory Hotel and the Z NYC Hotel. These Queens-based hotels are committed to arts and culture in the community and their brand identities are rooted in the arts. The Paper Factory’s eclectic decor and artistic ambiance are enriched by modern industrial accents reminiscent of this building’s past- a paper factory in 1970s, converted into a hotel in 2010s. The Z NYC Hotel is steps from the Queensboro Bridge, and features a sleek, Jazz Age theme combined with modernist industrial chic.

QCA ArtHotel artist residency program offers two Queens-based artists, a $3,000 stipend each, for a 3-month period of time to work outside of their traditional environment and daily life. While the artists do not live on site, the residency spaces are a place where artists retreat to create their work and have an opportunity to focus inwardly and share her/his process with the public.

The QCA ArtHotel residency is intended to give artists a safe place to focus on their work in the public realm, build different audiences, and be seen making work within the Queens community. In turn, this gives the public access to a working artist’s process. This residency is also intended to build the value of local working artists in an attempt to revise the narrative of displacement due to gentrification and development borough-wide.

For their inaugural year, visual artists Erin Treacy and Jennifer Williams were chosen from a pool of applicants based upon criteria that included artistic excellence, a public engagement experience and a clear proposal of art activity to happen during the residency. 

Jennifer Williams, who will be in residence at Z Hotel says, “what excited me about the ArtHotel residency was the chance to immerse myself in a neighborhood amidst radical change and transform the blank slate of a hotel room into localized experience describing the neighborhood's current state of flux.”

Erin Treacy of Sunnyside, Queens notes, "working in the studio is usually a solo pursuit for me. I am excited to be a resident at the Paper Factory Hotel, allowing for me to open up the studio process and discussion with a larger community. It is a great open and sunny space that will surely contribute to my palette and allow for me to expand the scale of my work!"

Artists like Jennifer and Erin are creative and valuable community members who are often experts at creative problem solving and encouraging neighbors to interact, in addition to being specialists who make works of art. The public and guests of the partnering hotels will be invited into the artist’s hotel room studios to experience the creative process at various times during the residency. The Queens Council on the Arts provides updates for ongoing activities as each of these participating hotels for the duration of the 3-month residency.

Photo: Queens Council on the Arts