Born in China in 1939, Lily Yeh came to the United States in the early 1960s and attended the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate school of Fine Arts. A very successful painter, she eventually became a professor at Philadelphia’s University of the Arts. Yeh returned to Beijing in 1989 to display her artwork at the Central Institute of Fine Art. While there, she witnessed the tragic events of Tianamen Square. Through the 1980s, Yeh came to realize that being an artist “is not simply about making art…It is about delivering the vision one is given…and about doing the correct thing without sparing oneself.” She has continued pursuing her vision by way of her new organization, Barefoot Artists, Inc., which instructs residents and artists on how to replicate the Village model in damaged communities around the globe.

-Excerpt from David Kuper’s Lily Yeh Interview