Our biennial Hatch is a celebration of creative incubation and community, featuring large-scale bird puppets, a 14-foot egg, storytelling, live music, and public exuberance. For every Hatch, the public is invited to construct bird costumes and to join disparate community members to hatch out of a giant egg and march joyously through Frenchtown.
It was established in 2016 to celebrate the founding of ArtYard as a nod to the location’s 20th-century history as an egg hatchery.
“The Hatch is a moment to come together with friends, family, neighbors, and strangers alike to create art, be silly, and dream,” said Jill Kearney, ArtYard’s founder and executive director. “All are invited to participate by dressing up as a bird, joining the procession, dancing to the music, and imagining the change you wish to hatch into the world.”
The most recent Hatch drew inspiration from Emily Dickinson’s poem, “Hope is the thing with feathers.”
The festival was held May 7, 2025 with the “cracking” of a towering 14-foot steel-welded egg perched on the edge of ArtYard’s riverside courtyard at 13 Front Street. Colorful flocks of human birds and giant bird puppets emerged, and a marching band, mariachi, and 25-person Brazilian drum corps led the procession to Sunbeam Lenape Park and through the borough’s idyllic downtown, ending in a lively dance party back at ArtYard.
The festival featured performances by Day Day Juicy Couture, featured on HBO Max’s reality voguing series Legendary; Orquesta La Sagrada Concepcion, a New Brunswick brass band; Mariachi Nuevo Amanecer, of Queens, NY; Batala Philly, an all-percussion community band; and crooner Eric Mingus, son of legendary jazz musician Charles Mingus.
Partnering organizations included Frenchtown’s Studio Route 29, Frenchtown Elementary School, the Lambertville Library, and coLAB Arts. A group of local seniors will perform a dance choreographed by Michael Sazonov, a dancer and teaching artist who leads ArtYard’s Creative Movement series.
ArtYard’s fifth Hatch returned as an in-person event following a pandemic hiatus on Saturday, June 25, 2022. The procession was led by Ocean Avenue Stompers, a New Orleans-influenced brass band. Artist Laura Bernstein and collaborators unfurled their Miracle Tapestry Project — panels of 12-foot-tall, hand-sewn fabrics chronicling the first 12 months of Covid-19 in the artist’s life. Bernstein and the artists read a collective poem written in embrace for finding joy in the natural world despite its perilous future.
Due to the COVID 19 pandemic, ArtYard’s fourth Hatch in the spring of 2020 transpired as a crowdsourced virtual event with participants sending in hatch-at-home videos.
Since construction had commenced at 13 Front Street, ArtYard’s third Hatch took place at the foot of the Frenchtown Bridge in Sunbeam Lenape Park. Accompanied by Brooklyn’s Hungry March Band, a flock of puppet birds, chickens, and vultures marched to the new ArtYard site, where Sister Cities Girl Choir sang to the assembled crowd.
ArtYard’s second Hatch engaged Italian composer Camilla Uboldi to create an original score for a homemade collection of marching toy pianos, typewriters, xylophones, and drums. The Hatch culminated in raucous impromptu dancing inside the soon to be demolished building at 13 Front Street.
The first Hatch began with a series of puppet-building workshops and was heralded by a lone saxophone player, “Sweet” Lee Odom. Odom led the parade of white birds to the opening of ArtYard’s first exhibition, an installation of mirrored pillars by Canadian artist Bruno Bilio, and Murmuration, a collaborative project by ArtYard’s Elsa Mora and Jill Kearney.
