September 24, 2025
ArtYard’s Creative Commons
Jill Kearney
Founder and Executive Director of ArtYard, a contemporary art center based in Frenchtown, N J
ArtYard’s Creative Commons
Jill Kearney
Founder and Executive Director of ArtYard, a contemporary art center based in Frenchtown, N J
Marsha Levin-Rojer, introducer, and Jill Kearney
Minutes of the Third Meeting of the 84th Year
George Bustin, Old Guard President, called the meeting to order and presided. Francis Slade led the invocation. The attendance at the Nassau Club was 95. There were two guests: Judith Brodsky (guest of Ferris Olin), and Kate Somers (guest of Marsha Levin-Rojer). Julie Elward-Berry read the minutes of the September 17th meeting.
Marsha Levin-Rojer introduced the speaker. Jill Kearney is a visionary in contemporary art and community building and is the Founder and Executive Director of ArtYard in Frenchtown, New Jersey. She graduated from Harvard in English and Creative Writing. She worked in Hollywood with Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope Studios and Premier magazine, and later in New York City with the Tribeca Film Festival. After marrying her husband, Kearney began producing collaborative theater, dance and literary events in a barn in Bucks County, PA. These events grew into the expanding endeavors of ArtYard today.
Jill Kearney spoke of fortuitous events in her life which, over time, developed a vision for art as personally and communally transformative. The daughter of artists, Kearney grew up in creative communities in Chicago and Provincetown. Afterward, as a young aspiring novelist, experiencing the isolation of that career, she moved in a new direction. Her subsequent work with film communities in Hollywood and New York were steps closer to the community art organizing she eventually came to do at ArtYard.
Kearney married and moved to Bucks County with her husband and children. She showed slides of the extravagant performances and concerts that took place in their barn. These events were exciting and popular but also illegal and were ultimately moved to Frenchtown.
In their new venue, projects inspired by examples of public celebration through the arts in Latin cultures, and similar ones in New Orleans, brought community together in joyful celebration. Alternating annually, “Hatch” and “Aqua Lumina” are examples of how these projects come alive: With Hatch, adults and children from all parts of the community are invited to make bird costumes (in some cases large flying puppets overhead!) and join to come forth out of a giant egg into a parade through town. In one Aqua Lumina event a chorus in wet suits sang from the middle of the Delaware River.
After working out of an older warehouse for several years, ArtYard constructed a new building to include a state of the art theater and art exhibition spaces. Just blocks away, ArtYard established Studio 29, which is a “progressive” art workshop for disabled people. Studio 29 enables its artists a greater sense of self and often a source of income and is integrated into all aspects of the ArtYard vision. Workshop art is exhibited in the Frenchtown Inn, which Kearney bought, then renovated, and renamed Finnbar, recruiting its chef from Berkeley’s Chez Panisse.
Kearney also bought a building to house artist residencies, providing space and time for artists to experiment without the pressure of finished work. Residents have ranged from Baryshnikov Arts Center dancers to musician Jon Batiste, alongside emerging playwrights and multimedia innovators. The residencies and gallery spaces explore ideas that have ranged from repurposing houses in the face of urban renewal, how objects tell stories, changing detritus from polluted waterways into hand-tufted maps of those same waterways, and creating interactive installations, such as a reimagined lunch counter where visitors exchange personal stories.
Initially sustained by her family’s business resources, ArtYard deliberately avoided outside funding, allowing Kearney to cultivate a vision free of external agendas. Nearly a decade on, with flourishing programs and broad community support, ArtYard now seeks funding aligned with its mission.
Today, Jill Kearney continues to guide ArtYard as “an incubator for creative expression and a catalyst for collaborations that reveal the transformational power of art.”
Respectfully sudmitted,
Madelaine Shellaby
Marsha Levin-Rojer introduced the speaker. Jill Kearney is a visionary in contemporary art and community building and is the Founder and Executive Director of ArtYard in Frenchtown, New Jersey. She graduated from Harvard in English and Creative Writing. She worked in Hollywood with Francis Ford Coppola’s Zoetrope Studios and Premier magazine, and later in New York City with the Tribeca Film Festival. After marrying her husband, Kearney began producing collaborative theater, dance and literary events in a barn in Bucks County, PA. These events grew into the expanding endeavors of ArtYard today.
Jill Kearney spoke of fortuitous events in her life which, over time, developed a vision for art as personally and communally transformative. The daughter of artists, Kearney grew up in creative communities in Chicago and Provincetown. Afterward, as a young aspiring novelist, experiencing the isolation of that career, she moved in a new direction. Her subsequent work with film communities in Hollywood and New York were steps closer to the community art organizing she eventually came to do at ArtYard.
Kearney married and moved to Bucks County with her husband and children. She showed slides of the extravagant performances and concerts that took place in their barn. These events were exciting and popular but also illegal and were ultimately moved to Frenchtown.
In their new venue, projects inspired by examples of public celebration through the arts in Latin cultures, and similar ones in New Orleans, brought community together in joyful celebration. Alternating annually, “Hatch” and “Aqua Lumina” are examples of how these projects come alive: With Hatch, adults and children from all parts of the community are invited to make bird costumes (in some cases large flying puppets overhead!) and join to come forth out of a giant egg into a parade through town. In one Aqua Lumina event a chorus in wet suits sang from the middle of the Delaware River.
After working out of an older warehouse for several years, ArtYard constructed a new building to include a state of the art theater and art exhibition spaces. Just blocks away, ArtYard established Studio 29, which is a “progressive” art workshop for disabled people. Studio 29 enables its artists a greater sense of self and often a source of income and is integrated into all aspects of the ArtYard vision. Workshop art is exhibited in the Frenchtown Inn, which Kearney bought, then renovated, and renamed Finnbar, recruiting its chef from Berkeley’s Chez Panisse.
Kearney also bought a building to house artist residencies, providing space and time for artists to experiment without the pressure of finished work. Residents have ranged from Baryshnikov Arts Center dancers to musician Jon Batiste, alongside emerging playwrights and multimedia innovators. The residencies and gallery spaces explore ideas that have ranged from repurposing houses in the face of urban renewal, how objects tell stories, changing detritus from polluted waterways into hand-tufted maps of those same waterways, and creating interactive installations, such as a reimagined lunch counter where visitors exchange personal stories.
Initially sustained by her family’s business resources, ArtYard deliberately avoided outside funding, allowing Kearney to cultivate a vision free of external agendas. Nearly a decade on, with flourishing programs and broad community support, ArtYard now seeks funding aligned with its mission.
Today, Jill Kearney continues to guide ArtYard as “an incubator for creative expression and a catalyst for collaborations that reveal the transformational power of art.”
Respectfully sudmitted,
Madelaine Shellaby