The awardee will have 24/7 access to their private studio for a 7 week term from ending July – August 2026 (subject to change).

Applications will on open, Sunday, March 15th, 2026! Applications are due by May 10th, 2026; 11:59pm (EST).

A selection committee will review the submissions and the awardee will be notified in the beginning of June and announced on the VP site shortly thereafter. 

Artists please note, the studio is of moderate size; 114 sq ft; 14’ x 8’, with 12’ ceilings, large 6’ x 6’ window (see photos below).

The VP residency is housed within Crown Studios, an artist building on a floor of eleven working arts professionals in the Crown and Prospect Heights neighborhoods of Brooklyn, New York. 

For more information please read our FAQs or please write us on our contact page.

Ready to apply? please see our Application Materials Checklist to make sure you have everything you need. 

Get a glimpse of the studio below!

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Residency:

Selection Process/Judges:

What are the specs and access to the studio?

You will have 24/7 access to the studio, in a private secure building. Studio space is 114 sq ft––14′ x 8′, with 12′ ceilings, large 6′ x 6′ ft window, AC/Heat, and lofted storage area. Additionally, the studio is not sound proof, so anyone working with sound must use headphones or maintain low volume. Please see below for example.

Please Note: Studio is located on 2nd floor walk-up of converted factory building. There is a freight elevator access but no passenger elevator.

Please see below for example of studio space:

About:

Have any further questions?

If you have any additional questions contact us!

Ready to apply?

Our visual artist residency applications will open soon!

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Application Checklist: Before filling out your residency application please have the following materials prepared and/or ready to upload. After you start your application you will not be able to save an incomplete form, you will have to start over. Only one completed submission per applicant. Application fee $25 (non-refundable), will be submitted through PayPal.

Upcoming Dates:

Visual Artist Residency 2026:
Applications Open: March 15th, 2026
Deadline: May 10th, 2026; 11:59pm (EST)

Writers Residency 2027: TBD

Studio Information:

Please keep in mind that the studio space is 114 sq ft. – 14′ x 8′, with 12′ ceilings, large 6’x6′ windows. The studio is located in Crown Heights in Brooklyn, New York.

Checklist:

100 – 250 word, project proposal
– additional .pdf, docx, .doc, .jpg files and supporting materials accepted (limited to 10 mb in size)

Project Outline:

– Provide a detailed outline of what you expect to complete within your 7 week term.
This visual artist residency will run from July – August 2026.

Visual Artists — 10work samples
– additional works will be reviewed if provided as link to url (online portfolio, published works, etc.)
– 5mb upload limit per file
– additional works accepted via url, to online portfolio or published works

Writers — Work Samples
– Poets, submit up to 15 – 20 pages of poetry
– Prose, 25 – 30 pages of prose
– screenplay/play script, provide 1 – 2 completed works
– additional works accepted via url, to online portfolio or published works

Video/performance
– video, provide url to linked works (no uploads)
– additional works accepted via url, to online portfolio or published works
(performance artists be aware of size restriction of studio before applying)

CV/Resume
– should reflect your artistic/creative accomplishments

2 references
– 1 professional reference, who can speak about your work and
– 1 personal reference, who can speak about you personally, your work ethic, values, and any other pertinent information about you.
– provide names and contact; phone/email of these individuals (letters not required).
– finalists’ references will be contacted by selection committee to speak about you.

$25 application fee (non refundable)
– submitted via PayPal

Have any further questions about the program? Contact us!

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NOVA CYPRESS BLACK (dey/dem/NOVA) writes deir name in all caps as a reminder to take up space as a disabled Black trans gender-expansive lighthouse. Dey are a recipient of fellowships from Poets House, The Poetry Project, Willow Arts Alliance, Cave Canem & Trans Poetics Archive. NOVA’s poetry has graced the pages of The Black Ordinary; Strange Horizons; Fifth Wheel Press; 580 Split; Zone 3 Press; etc. This MFA dropout was also a Staff Writer on season 3 of Showtime’s The L Word: Generation Q. Dey are the Founding Steward of THE BLACK TRANS GAZE GUIDE, a forthcoming digital archive of independent cinema by Black trans filmmakers. NOVA is a nomadic, genre-defying storyteller who pledges allegiance to liberation & pleasure. FREE PALESTINE. FREE SUDAN. FREE CONGO www.novacypressblack.com

Work Samples:

About the Works:

Blending Afro-surrealism with Black trans futurity, my manuscript-in-progress, WATCH PARTY, explores film, television, & the glow of digital intimacy as both archive & oracle. This debut poetry collection documents my evolution as a Black queer & trans non-binary millennial, assigned female at birth. Through tribute, intervention, & remix, these poems investigate gender, pleasure, community, & possibility. Beneath & beyond the flicker of screens.

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Libby Paloma (she/they) is an interdisciplinary artist working across sculpture, installation, and performance. Embracing maximal aesthetics, humor, and craft traditions, Paloma transforms familiar materials into layered forms imbued with multiple meanings.

For more works by Libby visit the following:

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Kim is a Brooklyn-based queer Filipino American filmmaker who spent their childhood in Singapore
and their adolencence in Virginia. They hold a BA in film and new media from the university from
Virginia.

Lastly, we are pleased to feature Kim’s film that they made during their time at the residence titled Is Your Daughter Safe? (2026)

To learn more about Kim visit our announcement post!

To view more works by Kim see below:

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Monica Sheets is a Saint Louis-based artist who explores ideas of participation and authority by producing installations, organizing events, and developing archives and oral histories. The throughline of her work is a focus on historiography and identity, exploring how our stories about the past play out in our lives today. This work follows a documentary tradition that resists sentimentality, confronts the elusive nature of truth, and embraces competing narratives. She is seeking to understand what it means to be an engaged citizen in the world beyond traditional forms of activism. 

Monica was born in Toledo, Ohio and studied photography at the Cleveland Institute of Art. Her experiences in the Rust Belt were pivotal to her decision to work directly with participants. From 2010 to 2014, she led Das Fundbuero, a storefront space in Leipzig that collected objects, hosted events and created a space for considering the nuances of East German history by the people who lived it. Recently, she worked on a series of collaborative projects with erotic dancers to explore the current conditions of and utopian visions for stripping.

Monica received an MFA in Public Art and New Artistic Strategies from the Bauhaus-University Weimar, Germany. Her work has been recognized by grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board, FORECAST Public Art, the MCAD-Jerome Fellowship for Emerging Artists, the Culture Foundation of the Free State of Saxony and A Blade of Grass Foundation’s Fellowship for Socially Engaged Art.

The Feminist Strip Club: The VIP Room
2019, participatory performance

The Feminist Strip Club was a group of current and former erotic dancers gathered by Monica Sheets to explore the present conditions of and utopian visions for stripping.

Modeled on its strip club namesake, The VIP Room was a space for one-to-one discussion. Dancers created menus of questions to focus discussion on the issues important to them. 

After discussion, dancers gave visitors an envelope and sent them to check out with the “house mom”—a type of backstage manager at clubs. The house mom walked visitors through paying fees to the club and tipping out to management and other staff. Scenarios ranged from a “good night” (earning $1850 and leaving with $995) to a “bad night” (owing the club money at shift end).

The Feminist Strip Club: The GRIND, Issues 1 – 3
2019 – 2023, digital print, 8.5 x 11″, 250 copies, 28pp

The GRIND was a zine covering issues relevant to the erotic dance community with artwork and writing by current and former dancers. The audience was both other dancers and a broad general audience. 

Click below to view the issues!

Issue 1, August 2019

Issue 2, May 2021

Issue 3, May 2023

Untitled Work in Progress
2023-2025, ink on paper, pastel on concrete, blacklight, audio, variable dimensions

For this body of work, Sheets drew from memory the floorplans of the strip clubs she worked at as a teenager. As she made each drawing, she recorded a narration of this process of remembrance. She forms a multi-layer document by revisiting the audio recordings and adding additional information that is triggered when listening onto another layer of paper. The image above shows one redrawn floorplan, enlarged to fill a space, with audio playing. A video excerpt is available here https://youtu.be/S2JgrWYFAWE?si=7wxAoPPygMgX80Za

The image above shows the first layer of one floorplan, and the image below shows a final floorplan, each layer represented by a different UV reactive ink. The final floorplans will be presented as installations in small booths with the audio narration.

View More by Monica:

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Zoe Schweiger is a painter born and based in Miami, Florida. She received her BFA in Interdisciplinary Sculpture from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore, Maryland in 2022.  She primarily makes figurative paintings of her loved ones distorted within a warm and saturated environment. She paints with a sense of urgency, distorting and blurring her subjects, mirroring the fluidity of her queer experience in a world increasingly defined by rising temperatures and environmental fragility. Schweiger has exhibited her work in a number of solo and group exhibitions, including When the Air Sticks and the Current Gathers at Expo Chicago with Mindy Solomon Gallery in Chicago, Illinois, and Above The Limestone at NSU Art Museum in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Schweiger has received numerous awards and grants, including an Innovate Grant and Miami Individual Artists (MIA) Grant and her work is in the permanent collection of The NSU Art Museum, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Ladies Night I
2025
Acrylic and ink on canvas
63” x 79”

The Embrace IV
2024
Acrylic and ink on canvas
40” x 30”

A Warm Stare
2025
Acrylic  on canvas
30” x 24”

Max, In Fluorescent Red
2024
Acrylic on canvas
10” x 8”

Lil Suzi and Gabby
2025
Acrylic on canvas
48” x 36”

The Embrace VI (Hanna and Kait)
2025
Acrylic and ink on canvas
40” x 60”

Ladies Night II
2025
Acrylic and ink on canvas
48” x 60”

View More by Zoe:

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Katherine Sepúlveda is a multidisciplinary Colombian – American artist based in Queens, New York. Through scenes depicting the rich visual culture of femme, Latine identity, her work explores themes of heritage, religion, queer hyperfemininity, and generational cycles. Latine maximalist aesthetics are tightly woven together to create “pocket universes,” typically made from acrylic and found material. Her portfolio examines the manner in which the consumption patterns of impoverished individuals of color are subject to scrutiny. Immersive installations both literally and figuratively take up space, queering the principles of art and elevating styles arbitrarily deemed “low-brow”. Compositions featuring biblical themes, apocalyptic imagery, cosmological concepts, and depictions of personal narratives, simultaneously allude to and dismiss references to trauma, isolation, and loss. Through satirical depictions of archangels, Franciscan friars, and the Holy Ghost, her paintings deconstruct and reclaim symbols of oppression.

Her work cycles through recurring motifs, interrogating the lasting legacies of colonialism and presenting hyperfemininity as a form of radical gender expression. Her work is informed by family archives, catholic devotional imagery, and life within New York City and its suburbs. Sepúlveda has participated in a number of group exhibitions throughout New York City, New England, and Baltimore. She has been an artist in residence at Kino Saito, Wave Hill’s Sunroom Project Space, and the Vermont Studio Center. In 2024, her solo exhibition at Wave Hill, Halloween House, was featured in Hyperallergic’s list of “15 Art Shows to See in New York City.” In 2025, she had a solo exhibition at Ruby / Dakota called Culona Politics. Sepúlveda received her BFA in painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2021.

Repent or Perish
2023
52 x 48 inches
Oil, acrylic, spray paint, and glitter on canvas

Mark of the Beast
2024
48 x 36 inches
Oil and acrylic on canvas

Heaven on Earth
2023
52 x 36 inches
Oil and acrylic on canvas

Culona Politics
2025
45 x 36 inches
Oil, acrylic, beads, magazine clippings, and gems on canvas and fabric

Kelly Clarkson Jesus
2025
48 x 36 inches
Oil, acrylic, and sticker gems on canvas

Sweet Angel
2025
60 x 36 inches
Oil, acrylic, gem stickers and magazine clippings on canvas

Perras y Perreo
2025
36 x 24 inches
Acrylic, beads, clay, magazine clippings, and gems on canvas, sequins, and mesh

Halloween House
2024
110 x 99 x 88 inches
Found furniture, family photographs, altered Catholic devotional items, recycled bottles, acrylic and house paint on wood, fabric, foam board, and cardboard

Altar
2021
96 x 180 x 60
Found furniture, cardboard, acrylic, oil, flashe paint, votive candles, household items, altered family archives, 60+ painted family photos

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About Libby:

Libby Paloma (she/they) is an interdisciplinary artist working across sculpture, installation, and performance. Embracing maximal aesthetics, humor, and craft traditions, Paloma transforms familiar materials into layered forms imbued with multiple meanings. Her immersive, labor-intensive soft sculptures draw from traditional sewing and craft techniques passed down by the women in her Mexican lineage. Through these tactile, richly textured works, Paloma explores intersectional identity, cultural transmission, and the radical softness of queerness. Often activated through sensory engagement or performance, Paloma’s pieces invite interaction and play, creating spaces of interconnection and reimagination through what she calls “world softening.”

Paloma’s performance pieces are shaped by lived experience and often unfold through humor, storytelling, and the expressive use of the body to share nuanced perspectives on queerness, disability, and identity. Their performances often subvert dominant narratives using humor and absurdity to open space for empathy and embodiment. Playful yet pointed, their performance work activates her sculptural environments and deepens the emotional and conceptual resonance of the works.

Before fully pursuing an art career, Paloma spent two decades working in education as a counselor, teacher, and Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP). They hold a BA in Liberal Studies, an MS in Communicative Disorders from San Francisco State University, and an MFA from Parsons School of Design at The New School, where she received the President’s and University Full Scholarship.

Current Work by Libby:

Connective Tissue (2025)

Brings together the work of three queer femme artists, Libby Paloma, Heather Renée Russ, and Caitlin Rose Sweet.

Libby Paloma’s soft sculpture and performance piece contains oversized, tactile pies. The work transforms an everyday symbol of empty promise into a sensorial environment where sweetness pledged is actually served. She uses traditional sewing techniques passed down by the Chicanas in her family. Her practice is rooted in a conceptual framework they call world-softening, grounded in their lived experience with a congenital connective tissue disorder.

Images were photographed by Velvetpark Media
copyright © Velvetpark Media 2025

My work is often an exploration of language, materiality, and the cultural perceptions of what it means to live with a disability (I have a congenital connective tissue disorder and hearing loss) as a queer, mixed Latinx, femme. Recently, I’ve been inspired by the scholar Theresa Milbrodt—who has written about how able-bodied people often misread disability as inherently “tragic”—my work instead foregrounds humor, storytelling, hope, flexibility, and resistance.

Past Works by Libby:

Based on Actual Events
is a multidisciplinary work that combines live performance, sculpture, and video. In this piece, the character Libby attends a peculiar, humorous, and unsettling telemedicine appointment with Dr. Dislodge and Receptionist Michelle—both also played by Libby Paloma.

No Picnic
In this installation, I combined my creative research and background in Speech-Language Pathology to explore idiomatic expressions using humor to scrutinize life’s difficulties while offering simultaneous relief. The word picnic originates from the French word “pique-nique,” dating back to the 17th century, with the direct translation meaning “bite little nothings.”…

Still Living (with)
I recreated a still-life scene from my couch—where I spent much of the previous year recovering from a particularly difficult period related to my connective tissue disorder. The installation featured over 40 soft sculptures made from upcycled fabric, including soft sculpture food items designed for interaction, and a rug where visitors were invited to sit or lie down. The piece breathed admiration and care into personal objects, discarded materials, my ever-healing body, and the strangers who came to experience it.

View More by Libby:

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About Kim:

Kim Salac (they/them) is a Brooklyn-based queer Filipino-American filmmaker who spent their childhood in Singapore and their adolescence in Virginia. They hold a BA in Film and New Media from the University of Virginia. There, they taught as an Aunspaugh Fellow, and later became an artist-in-residence at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. Over the last six years, they have produced twenty-seven short films and screened recently at the New York Film Festival. Today, Salac uses personal documentary to assert modes of labor—be they personal, domestic, or collective—as transitory yet potent sites for reckoning with the legacy of U.S. imperialism and its aftermath of migration and cultural displacement in the Philippines.

Works by Kim:

I’ll Come Meet You in The Morning (2024)

In the early months of 1970, the Filipino masses organized to overthrow the dictator Marcos and his imperial puppeteers. Imagined as a letter to Enrique Sta. Brigada, a student protestor martyred at the hands of state brutality, this elegy pays homage to collective realities of grief and struggle.

The Seafarer (2023)

In this visual diary, personal archives interweave with the found archives of strangers to fill in gaps where time has eroded details. This act of “fishing,” a deliberate practice of collection, is a living act, casted as a form of eulogy and rebuilding simultaneously.

View More by Kim:

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Its with a heavy heart that we mark the passing of a queer luminary, Jill Sobule. She was both the subject and a friend of Velvetpark Media. She had been featured in our magazine over the years.

Much has been written about her passing and her contributions to the music world and to queer activism, and progressive politics. I’ve re-posted a video I shot back in 2009 at the end of a multi-state tour of the US. Here Jill and Erin McKeown chit chat with me about the tour.

[photo. Desdemona “Bunty” Burgin]

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Meet our Artist-in-Residence of 2024, Soeun Bae.

We had the pleasure of speaking with her a few weeks ago and were intrigued by the works she presented. She recently wrapped up a show at Wave Hill Gallery and she talks us through some of the pieces there.

One of which is her silicone word diagrams where she shows its process from their inception. While at the studio Soeun is does a sleep over / studio visit with select people. Where she invites people to sleep over and experience her works.

Lastly she shares some of her thoughts on her process and her works in general. We truly enjoyed getting to know Soeun and experience her works, and we hope that the interview with her lets you take a peek into that world.

For more works by Soeun visit:
https://soeunbae.com

Lastly, we’d like to thank Soeun Bae for her time! Check out our past resident videos in our playlist!

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The Garment District Alliance of New York (GDA) is featuring artist Kevin Lustik, in its ongoing series of public exhibits dedicated to artists merging tradition with innovation. Needling is Lustik’s series of twenty whimsical and wry needlepoint works that explore political and social issues, stitched together with a deft and humorous touch.

Lustik’s imaginative craft work evokes a folksy Americana yet upon closer inspection you are confronted by piercing social commentary such as School Zone Sign, a play on the yellow street signage punctured by holes in the yarn revealing a blood red background. Or the more psychologically where hands play with yarn toying a baby blue brain in The Puppeteer. Few artists can pull off hot button issues of the day such as climate change, and the disregard for human virtue, as quirky and dare I say delightfully, as Kevin Lustik.

Enjoy this sneak peek below, and if you are in New York stroll by Needling in person, in the Garment district at:
209 West 38th Street (street-level window)
On view now until January 27th, 2025.

For more information on Kevin Lustic isit LustikArt on Instagram and Facebook.

The Garment District Alliance (www.garmentdistrictnyc.com), is a not-for-profit corporation established in 1993 to improve the quality of life and economic vitality of Manhattan’s Garment District. . For more information on the Garment District Alliance’s many art initiatives and plaza programming, please visit: https://garmentdistrict.nyc/arts

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