Abstract:

"Lily Yeh is searching for a “dustless place”—the serenity depicted in the landscape paintings she encountered as a student in China. Sometimes called crazy and stubborn, sometimes compared to an angel, this fiesty immigrant artist and activist sees potential in the most unlikely places. As director of the Village of Arts and Humanities—an oasis of culture and color in North Philadelphia—she believes community art projects foster economic and social change. Yeh has also exported this idea to a bleak village adjacent to Nairobi’s garbage dump, where a burgeoning crafts industry is stimulating economic growth. "