ArtYard began its life in 2005 as a series of experiments in an unheated former dairy barn in Jill Kearney and Stephen McDonnell’s Bucks County, Pennsylvania backyard. Over the next decade, Jill and Stephen organized literary, music, theater, and dance events on the improvised stage before crowds of friends invited to perch on stackable chairs.
After a decade of joyful mayhem, Jill and artist Elsa Mora began exploring the possibility of formalizing these adventures in a space that might have luxuries like plumbing and heating. In 2015, ArtYard was incorporated as a 501(c)3 nonprofit arts center. The founding team fastened on a former electronics warehouse and abandoned egg hatchery located a few hundred yards apart in the congenial, walkable town of Frenchtown, New Jersey. These buildings were perched on the Delaware River, a little more than one hour’s drive from Philadelphia and Manhattan.
The venture was named ArtYard. Inspiration came from the Contemporary Art Workshop in Chicago (founded by Kearney’s parents), the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and Mora’s eclectic, wide-ranging arts education in Cuba.
Other influences include Peter Schumann’s Bread and Puppet Circus, MASS MoCA, and Robert Putnam’s brilliant book, Bowling Alone, a chronicle of the siloing of American culture, the waning of everyday encounters between disparate groups, and the attendant loneliness and decline in social mobility which ensued. Putnam’s book suggests that the arts are one of the last remaining means of engendering meaningful encounters between people from disconnected communities. With its curated exhibitions, programming, and communal celebrations, ArtYard from the outset aimed to nurture a web of creative connection.
On September 4th, 2016, a festival, the Hatch, announced ArtYard’s presence to Frenchtown. A giant egg cracked open, unleashing a flock of puppet and costumed birds from the derelict hatchery’s loading dock, a celebration of creative incubation and ArtYard’s mission statement: “ArtYard is an incubator for creative expression and a catalyst for collaborations that reveal the transformational power of art.”
The ArtYard team set about curating art exhibitions and an unfurling program of theater, music, poetry, film, and “Crankie” making, a communal storytelling process that Jill encountered while apprenticing at Bread and Puppet. With a staff in the single digits and a small, low-ceilinged theater equipped with scrounged equipment, ArtYard hosted 93 events in its inaugural year. As ArtYard matured, staff expanded, and programming grew to include workshops and artist talks. A five-bedroom residential building was acquired at 50 Trenton Avenue to house visiting artists.
Since that first Hatch, established artists, musicians, and writers shared ArtYard’s galleries and stage with emerging and local artists, some of whom were receiving their first opportunity to perform or engage with an audience.
Artists in their ninth decade, young artists in their first forays, and musicians from around the world have crossed paths here. In its early years, ArtYard premiered an original chamber opera written by a local composer, and on another occasion offered the stage to an emerging poet who had attended Ross Gay’s poetry workshop. Another wildly original evening featured the poet Sasha Styles, Bina 48, an artificially intelligent being and the first sentient robot of color.
Thanks to the generosity of founding board member and Applegate Farms founder Stephen McDonnell and a gift from the estate of Jack and Lynn Kearney, ArtYard engaged architects Ed Robinson and William Welch to design an art exhibition and theater complex to rise on the hatchery site in the center of Frenchtown.
This approach allowed ArtYard to continue operation in its provisional location until the new building was completed. ArtYard purchased a second iconic five-unit residency building at the foot of the Frenchtown bridge in 2020. The nascent residency program will foster collaboration with like-minded arts organizations, offering visiting artists live/work space to incubate new work, and will strive to provide Frenchtown with opportunities to observe and/ or partake in the creative process by participating in workshops, open rehearsals, artist talks, performances, and art installations.
In 2020, ArtYard endured the COVID crisis and pivoted to a range of virtual and outdoor programming while construction continued, delayed but not defeated by closures and supply chain challenges. ArtYard’s state-of-the-art new building at 13 Front Street opened in May 2021 with the inaugural exhibition, Girl You Want, curated by J. Vanessa Lyon.
