20 NOVEMBER 2 0 2 1 EXPLORE YOUR BORO
led, multifunctional space that strives to meet
the needs of our neighbors,” vendor member
Seema Shakti said.
Shakti creates vibrant illustrations of women
of color as well as watercolor or digital
floral depictions, and she has been selling
her work on and off for nine years. While she
launched an e-commerce store earlier this
year and previously sold through third-party
online vendors, this is her first time selling
her wares in a storefront.
“My next step was to expand my offerings
to physical stores in Queens. It was
actually a goal I had for this fall and the
opportunity to apply as a vendor member
came at a moment of total alignment,”
Shakti said.
The Queens-born illustrator, who has lived in
Astoria for the past two years, is also a part of
the collaborative’s design and marketing committee.
Shoppers can find her illustrations as
prints, stickers and notebooks on a shelf in the
collaborative space.
To help expand its reach and bring more
perspectives to the collaborative and space,
QNSC partnered with three organizations:
The Rolling Library, Kaleidospace and
Queens Liberation Project, each of which
has a merchandising space or a fixture in
the store.
The Rolling Library is a community-supported
bookstore that operates on a pay-whatyou
can system, so it has a bookshelf and
sunlit reading corner in QNSC. Kaleidospace
is a collective that prioritizes BIPOC, AAPI and
LGBTQIA+ artists, activists and vendors, and it
has a shelf of paintings made by Latinx artists
displayed in the QNSC storefront. The Queens
Liberation Project is a mutual aid group with a
focus in Black and community liberation. You
can find their zines on a shelf in the store showcasing
BIPOC artists.
QNSC hopes for more shared community
spaces where they can hold workshops,
studio spaces, workspaces, a community
garden and more. No matter where the
group goes from here or what QNSC organizes
down the road, it will certainly follow
the group’s tagline: “Community over
competition.”
QNS Collaborative
25-09 ASTORIA BLVD., ASTORIA
QNSCOLLABORATIVE.COM
@QNSCOLLABORATIVE
Photos by Sarah Sukumaran
/QNSCOLLABORATIVE.COM
