Looking at an abandoned lot, most people would just see trash and debris. Lily Yeh, however, would see an opportunity for renewal and growth.
"When things are broken down... new things can occur," Yeh said.
Yeh spoke to an audience of almost 40 undergraduate and graduate students Wednesday night in Houston Hall about urban transformative art projects.
Yeh is the founder and director of the Village of Arts and Humanities, a private nonprofit organization in North Philadelphia. Through art, the Village works to revitalize and rebuild the surrounding neighborhood. With the help of community volunteers, the group turns abandoned lots and vacant buildings into parks, gardens and educational facilities.
"Lily has been one of the most inspiring community-based artists that I have come across," said Larry Cohn, a third-year graduate student studying architecture.
Yeh grew up in China studying formal Chinese landscape painting and later moved to the U.S., where she received her masters in Fine Arts at Penn. She is able to contribute her talents as an artist by bringing beauty and life to places that were once just a pile of trash. Mosaics, courtyards and Chinese gardens now fill deserted North Philadelphia properties, which Yeh said she believes "provokes good will" in the community.
Yeh became involved with what she calls "urban alchemy" in 1986 when a Philadelphia community organization asked her to build a park in place of a house that had been leveled.
When Yeh first surveyed the site of the lot, she recalled that "barrenness and chaos" surrounded her.
"I needed to give it a sense of place and [a] sense of center," she said. "I picked up a stick and drew a circle and said, 'Let's dig here.'" With the help of community volunteers and kids from the neighborhood, they began to turn the lot into a park.
Lacking funds, Yeh decorated the park with cement sculptures and painted a mural of the ocean because the land "cried for water." When the project was finished, Yeh had no intention of returning, but for the rest of the year, Yeh admitted that she "couldn't get [the summer project] out of [her] mind."
The following summer, Yeh returned, and she continued working on projects throughout the North Philadelphia area and building and expanding the Village.
The Village has extended its reach as far as Kenya, Ecuador and the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. In Philadelphia, the group not only works to transform the physical community, but it helps to enrich the people of the community as well. The Village provides a year round after- school program for children ages 6 to 18. It has its own theater and holds festivals and events for the Village community.
"I've come to conceive of the Village as a living piece of sculpture, in which sculpture is a communal event," Yeh explained. Yeh has been a part of the Village for 16 years, and she admitted that she now finds her home in the parks and gardens of North Philadelphia.
Following her talk, the audience members' loud applause was a clear sign of their appreciation.
"I thought she was so inspirational," College senior Suzy Berger said.
"The Village is more than just a project -- it's a spiritual quest," said Michelle Barbieri, a City and Regional Planning master's student.
Yeh encouraged her audience to act on their interests in community service.
"If you crave something transforming, we've got it," she said.
Yeh's talk was organized by Slought Networks, a group that promotes art in the Philadelphia community.
