Artworks Trenton has postponed one of its most visible community art projects, Art All Night.
The reasons deal with pragmatics. The usual venue for the festival, the Roebling Wire Works building in the old Roebling Factory complex, has been closed for several months because of the flooding. And unfolding needs to mount the event in the State of New Jersey-operated Trenton War Memorial became unattainable.
No matter. Artworks is still responding to a post-COVID era and working to promote a more vibrant city through the arts.
Over the past year, the organization has attracted thousands of visitors to its exhibitions and student projects, is overseeing the design of an “art walk” from the Trenton Transit Center to Mill Hill and downtown, and planning for both Art All Day 2023, set for September, and Art All Night 2024.
By doing so, Artworks also continues the efforts that began nearly 50 years through an artistic movement generated by artists who not only committed to changing the capital city but still participate in the city’s culture — and create art.
One such artist is Mary Yess, who played a crucial role in establishing Artworks Trenton and as well as creating the Ellarslie Open.
That annual juried art event at the Trenton City Museum in the Ellarslie Mansion in Cadwalader Park recently marked its 40th anniversary with an exhibition on view through September 30.
According to several archived histories, the Artworks story begins with the building, an early 20th century garage that eventually turned into a warehouse for the Sears Company when it had been located at the current Department of Motor Vehicles building on Stockton Street.
When Sears closed its Trenton store in the late 1970s, City of Trenton Mayor Arthur Holland and city planner Tom Ogren launched the effort to acquire the building as an arts center and add to an effort that saw the transformation of the Ellarslie Mansion into a museum and securing an abandoned church built in 1873 for the Mill Hill Playhouse.
Both of which would enhance the cultural life of the city.
Meanwhile, Mary Howard, dean of Mercer County Community College’s downtown Kerney Campus, and Trenton artist Latta Patterson began bringing Trenton artists together to create an organization that became the Trenton Artists Workshop Association (TAWA).
Yess became its first president and guided the organization forward as it created a two-month arts festival, Eyes on Trenton.
The event attracted thousands to downtown Trenton and demonstrated the vital role the arts played in urban planning.
While TAWA seemed to be the right organization to take the lead in coordinating the new arts center and current president, Dave Orban, was engaged in discussions, the reality was that TAWA was an all-volunteer organization and unable to provide the full-time management needed to for successful operations.
However, Yess had assumed the role of executive director of the Princeton Arts Association, PAA, and stepped forward.
During a recent interview in the Hamilton home she shares with her artist husband, the already mentioned Orban, Yess talked about the development of the PAA, how she became involved, and how it came to move to Trenton and become Artworks.
She says the PAA started in the mid-1960s in a Dutch-styled former bank building on Nassau Street.
One of its founders was artist Huey Lee-Smith, a nationally known artist of African ancestry. He was also a member of the circle of artists involved with Rex Goreleigh’s Studio on the Canal (recently highlighted in the Arts Council of Princeton exhibition “James Wilson Edwards and a Circle of Black Artists“).
The PAA eventually settled on Ettl Farm, owned by artist Alex Ettl, in 1980 under then-director Mary Ward. Yess says that Ward began calling around for recommendations for a new director and called nationally know artist, Mercer County Community College instructor, and founding TAWA member Mel Leipzig.
“Mel recommended me,” says Yess, adding that she took over just as the Ettl was selling the farm and the arts organization was able to secure a Princeton Borough-owned building, the gym formerly used by Miss Fine’s School.
Then, “The borough decided it wanted (the building and adjacent space) for a senior center. We were up the creek looking for a place to go.”
A then-Mill Hill Trenton resident in communication with other TAWA members, Yess was aware of the city’s hopes to establish its building as an arts center, and, along with PAA member Susan Hockaday, opened a discussion with her board and the city.
After convincing the board that the organization could continue through a long term, no cost agreement with the City of Trenton, Yess saw the PAA move its operations to Trenton in 1988.
Under Yess’s guidance through 1992, Artworks soon established its reputation as exhibition and learning center. Partners included the Trenton Public Schools.
Yess links her interest in Trenton and art to her family.
“My grandfather owned (the formerly Trenton based) White Eagle printing and publishing. My father was a printer at White Eagle and Trenton Times. My mother was a poetry editor at Columbia University until she got married and worked as an editor at White Eagle.
Although born at Fort Dix, she and her family lived in the Broad Street Park area of Hamilton Township.
In addition to having a family involved with printing and editing, Yess says there were also several artists in the family.
That includes an aunt who “was a painter and an illustrator for New Jersey Business Magazine. She may have also done the original logo for Hamilton Hospital. Then I have cousins who were painters.”
However, the idea of becoming an artist and being engaged with arts organizations was not her original intent.
“When I was an undergraduate, I was studying archaeology at Millersville College” in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, she says, “One of the requirements was to take an art class. I took an art history survey course. The guy (leading the class) was so enthusiastic about the art and take us to studios.”
Yess says she also thought of her artist aunt and said to herself, “I want in.”
The decision was reinforced by a “lot of little prompts,” such as seeing female artists becoming more recognized and involved.
Regarding her own artistic pursuits, she says, “When I first started out, (my art) was all very representation and realism oriented. When I went to Pratt (in New York), I quickly went into more abstracted visions of what I did.
“As soon as I was on my own as an artist, I always did industrial buildings from day one. I absolutely love them. I named my series American Versailles; they’re like palaces to me.”
Yess connects her inspiration to her proximity and mentions becoming attracted to the old factory buildings on Route 1 and sketching the others she noticed while commuting by train between Trenton and New York.
“When I first started (my factory paintings), they were very abstract, almost primitive in style, blocks and cubes, and richer in color. In later years, they’ve become more realistic. I don’t know why — maybe creating more order in a chaotic life,” she says.
After graduating, Yess was in a relationship and moved with him to Chicago and found a job at the University of Chicago Press.
When circumstances changed in the mid-1970s, she returned to the Trenton area and started taking graduate classes and getting involved with regional arts organizations.
“All these groups were looking for a sucker,” she says about committing hours of volunteer work with TAWA and the Trenton City Museum, where TAWA regularly mounted exhibitions.
It was there that Yess proposed the Ellarslie Open, the juried exhibition that now attracts artists from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York.
Although she continued her involvement in the arts over the past several decades, Yess, who has a daughter, built on her past editing and graphic works, launched a consulting business with her husband, and took a longtime position with the nonprofit ECS — The Electrochemical Society.
Now retired, she re-engaged with her past and is leading a committee to organize a fall “TAWA at 45” exhibition at Trenton City Museum.
Looking at the work she and other artists had accomplished in building the foundation for today, she says, “We had nothing and it was hard. It was hard to convince people to support it.
“You need a critical mass. That’s why I got involved with the museum, the arts council, loft spaces. People were adventurous in a different way than they are now.”
The Trenton City Museum presents “Ellarslie Open 40,” at Ellarslie Mansion, Cadwalader Park, Trenton, through September 30, Friday and Saturday, noon to 4 p.m., Sunday, 1 to 4 p.m. Free. More information at www.ellarslie.org.
And look for more on artist Mary Yess at www.saatchiart.com/maryyess.
‘Oxford Codex-Lares Industria IV' by Mary Yess.,
