How Can Queer Artists Survive in NYC? A New Incubator Is Looking to Warhol for Inspiration

New York City has long been the de facto artistic capital of the United States. From Andy Warhol to Jean-Michel Basquiat to Audre Lorde, burgeoning artists have been inspired by the metropolis for decades, using it as a backdrop to actualize their visions. But as prices skyrocket , gentrification pushes out entire communities, and many artists find themselves unable to make a living, let alone get their projects off the ground, how are creative endeavors meant to flourish? For Joseph Frederick Allen that one answer might be The FRAME, a new artistic institution he cofounded that provides artists of a variety of disciplines with funding, work spaces, and a community of creatives ready to support them. Inspired by Warhol’s Factory, a studio and community gathering space the famous visual artist used to form his most iconic multidisciplinary projects, The FRAME is meant to encourage artists to create together and help mold each other’s development. “I was really seeking a home for all kinds of artistic disciplines to live in one place,” Allen says. “I myself am an artist and I draw and I have performed and I write and direct and I find that people can get really suspicious of that, like they don't actually believe that you have all those things within you. So, I thought I would make a place where all those things could live together.” Operating out of BroadwayVox Studios in Midtown Manhattan, The FRAME’s first cohort consists of 10 artists, including director Nic Cory (known for Red Ink ), visual artist Drew Elhamalawy (known for Broadway production The Queen of Versailles ), and filmmaker Brent Thomas Whiteside (known for Tempest & The Black Madonna and mini documentary Black Trans Liberation ). For its inaugural year, The FRAME provides its cohort with artist space, funding, a creative team, and industry exposure, with work debuting throughout the year. Allen says he knows intimately how hard it is to make a living as a working queer artist in the city. And with the support of established creatives like Tony Award-winning actor Sara Ramirez and former Disney Theatrical president Thomas Schumacher , The FRAME is one step toward closing those gaps in access. “Queer people are just the best and so inherently creative,” he says. “We're always imagining the world the way it can be, and it really just stretches our imagination. For so many of us, that was a safe place for us when we were young or even now. I know it is a safe place for me, still, and I think that The FRAME is allowing that to just exist without having to qualify its existence.” The first project produced by The FRAME’s cohort presented to the public will be a performance of Allen’s play Jackson’s Island: Huck, Tom, Queers and Us . Ahead of the performance, Allen spoke with Them about how the incubator came to be — and where it fits in New York City’s queer artistic legacy. Photos by Drew Elhamalawy Talk about the concept for the FRAME. How has putting it together been, and your role in all of it. The FRAME was inspired in a large part by Andy Warhol's Factory, which back in mid-century was a physical place that he had. His was an enterprise. It was a small business, but it really was this place like a watering hole for artists across disciplines and multidisciplinary artists. They made films and visual art, performance art pieces, obviously paintings and pictures. I looked at that as a really exciting model of what we could have and what we don't have anymore in New York City — a place where everything can live and where making things is actually as much of the draw as a finished project or a finished product. It's not just that this show is going to be on Broadway with hydraulics, it's that the act of creating the show is an exciting draw, and that's what The Factory had. It was a cultural export in New York City. I wanted to take the spirit of that and make The FRAME. It seems like more of an artistic community approach, right? Does that feel accurate in terms of Warhol's approach? Absolutely, and we really wanted it to be community-based, so we're in residence at BroadwayVox Studios where they have this amazing studio space in Midtown Manhattan. Having that brick and mortar helps us because we can have a place to congregate and really get to know one another. We want to create a full 360-degree artist ecosystem that helps as a sustainable place for artists to come both energetically, creatively, but also just for their art practices. We're really encouraging people in this cohort to collaborate beyond the projects that they're bringing and come up with new things. They all get studio hours to come and use however they want beyond their projects, so we're just trying to get people in here. The energy is so fun. What are the challenges that artists face that The FRAME wants to address and make space to overcome? It's just so hard to get anything made, or it's so hard to find a place to do it, or it's so hard to balance a day job and my creative practice. These are the plights of the artist since the beginning of time. None of these problems are new, and so I think that we have to come up with new ways to combat them or new systems, new infrastructure to really elevate artists in the city. I love New York City. I'm a diehard New Yorker, but it's hard to live here and it's really hard to be an artist, and I think a lot of that has to do with space. It's hard, especially for performing arts. Renting a studio to do anything meaningful — if you want to rehearse a show — it's thousands of dollars for just one week. So we provide space for these people, which is good community wise, but also literally we have this great rehearsal studio, so we can do workshops with plays, we can have choreographers work with dancers, and they don't have to pay for that. We're actually giving them an honorarium to be a part of this, and we're funding their projects for them. It allows people to bring something to completion. I feel like affordability is such a barrier for especially marginalized artists to be able to overcome. As we put together this first cohort of artists, some people are people that I knew really well already and had worked with or I'm in community with, but other people I was connected with by other members of my community. Brent Thomas Whiteside, who is the documentarian, was introduced to me by Sara Ramirez. It was really kind of serendipitous because I was at the Broadway is Trans fundraiser in June, where we were celebrating Qween Jean's big Tony win , and I saw this video that they played on the screen about about Qween's organization, Black Trans Liberation Kitchen , and I was like, “Wow, this video is amazing, like who made this?” I was looking for a filmmaker to bring into The FRAME, and I was having lunch with Sara a couple weeks later. They were like, “I noticed that you needed a filmmaker, and I wanted to recommend this person,” and it ended up being Brent who had made the video. It felt like this really cool way that community keeps uplifting community and bringing it together, bringing us together and people that didn't know each other before. Tell me about your first show! Our first show, and I actually wrote the play, is called Jackson's Island: Huck, Tom, Queers and Us . It is a queer play that looks at grief and how queerness affects grief and coming of age. Grief is a very powerful thing, and I think a lot of queer people experience grief in many ways. To start off with it, that really feels like a strong point of view that we get to have. We are saying, “OK. This is a place where we're not going to shy away from things. This isn't a place where we're censoring ourselves or trying to become palatable.” We’re announcing our programming with “queer” in the title. I'm proud of that. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Get the best of what’s queer. Sign up for Them ’s newsletters .