Art with a heart

When visiting artist Lily Yeh teaches a drawing class, color is rhythm, composition is breath, inspiration is seed and the creative process is a network of roots.

While not literally true, of course, it’s imagery that’s nonetheless engaging. And, if audience feedback is anything to go by, it’s imagery that inspires action as much as it inspires thought.

Hopping from one square of colored linoleum to another to illustrate a point during a recent campus visit, the internationally recognized artist clearly has what it takes to engage listeners on both levels. It’s precisely this ability that has brought Yeh, known just as widely for her community activism as for her painting and sculpture, to the University to spearhead the new “Art as Social Activism” program.

“You are a major contact point with the community,” Yeh says, addressing a drawing class during a November visit. “Through your role and your vision, you have the power to embrace and strengthen that connection.”

Supported by $70,000 in grants from the College of Arts and Sciences, UD’s Center for Teaching Effectiveness/General Education and IT-User Services, Yeh is leading several local art projects designed to strengthen bonds between the University and Newark’s African-American community. In the process, she says she hopes to increase social awareness and “root art in the community.”

Yeh is internationally celebrated as an artist and as the founder of the Village of Arts and Humanities in north Philadelphia, where she has worked with children and adults to transform abandoned lots into community gardens, arts centers and public parks. Her work has taken her to communities in other parts of the United States and abroad, and she has led land-transformation projects in such nations as China, Kenya, Ghana, Italy and Ecuador.

Yeh has received numerous honors, including a 2003 Ford Foundation Leadership for a Changing World Award, and has been featured in a television documentary, An Angel in the Village.

Visiting Newark twice a month during the current academic year, Yeh splits her time between on-campus studios and off-campus community centers and churches to facilitate several collaborative projects. They include murals, portraits, a decorative quilt, an installation and several ancillary video and photography ventures.

By bridging the two communities through a medium that demands a hands-on approach, the projects are intended to broaden both students’ and residents’ frames of reference and to address cultural and generational divides.

“I think many young people today feel restless and feel that the art world and the studio world isolate them from the flux and energy of life,” Yeh says. “What this program intends to do is to take art from the studio and gallery and root it in the community.”

It’s also, Yeh says, preserving valuable memories and giving everyone involved in the effort a broader sense of history and place.

A key part of the project involves preserving the history of Newark’s African-American community through the recollections of its longtime residents. Bernard Herman, Edward F. and Elizabeth Goodman Rosenberg Professor of Art History, and the 12 students in his American material culture seminar began collecting oral histories during the fall semester. They have interviewed residents of the section of Newark known as The Row or The Village, a neighborhood established in the mid-1800s in the heart of Newark near the UD campus, and are compiling their memories and photographs in a book.

“The book is written entirely in the words of the community,” Herman says.

After reading typed transcriptions of those oral histories, students in one undergraduate art class are creating large-scale (10 feet by 50 inches) drawings that illustrate the stories.

In another project, students in a special freshman program focusing on the connection between history and art are taking images created by African-American residents and sewing them into a quilt. When finished, the quilt will serve as a “map” of how the community might have looked several decades ago. And, several students working on their own are creating portraits, photographs and videos to bring history up-to-date by capturing community members as they appear now.

A class offered this spring by Virginia Bradley, chairperson of the Department of Fine Arts and Visual Communications, broadens the scope even more by involving students from several different academic disciplines in creating a large-scale community installation project.

“Whether it’s going to be a mural or a garden or a mosaic barbecue we’re not sure yet,” Bradley says. “But, somehow we’re going to create a sense of place, give it some distinction and honor the contributions of Newark’s African-American residents.”

Yeh is developing several design proposals, which will be presented to community members for feedback. Rebecca Dietz, a master’s degree candidate in fine arts, says it’s precisely this collaborative spirit that makes Yeh’s “Art as Social Activism” program so effective.

“In my own art, a piece is usually completed before it is presented for public response,” she explains. “In this project, the [creative] process is initiated through dialog, agreement, disagreement, memories and new thoughts.”

Jo Ann Johnson, a resident of Newark’s African-American community for the past 50 years, attends Yeh’s semimonthly visits to Newark’s Elks Club and is actively involved in several of the projects. She agrees that a lively exchange of ideas is crucial to the program’s success—and to opening lines of communication between groups.

“Lily is such a warmhearted person that you don’t mind sharing information with her,” Johnson says. “She comes across as very intelligent and compassionate, and she’s very sincere in what she’s trying to do.

“I am hoping that this project is going to improve the relationship between the community and the University. I think a lot of us are hoping that the art will be only the beginning step.”

—Becca Hutchinson