An artist's haven: The renaissance in Trenton

Acrylics, cans of spray paint, sketchbooks and four-foot wooden panels clutter Leon Rainbow's garage. Originally from San Jose, Calif., the 25-year-old up-and-coming artist came to Trenton four years ago seeking a new start. Since his enrollment in Mercer County Community College as a graphic design and web development student, he has made Trenton his home and the people and environment the inspiration for his artwork.

Rainbow took a job in Café Olé on Warren Street and familiarized himself with the regular patrons by "finding out what they do." Soon after, Rainbow broke onto the art scene. His unique style melds fine art techniques with abstract graffiti; Rainbow's pithy titles always convey his positive messages.

"There is definitely a network here downtown aimed at supporting artists," he explained. "I am helped because I take advantage of it as much as I can. You have to be willing to work with people and have a strategy [in order to make it]. A lot of it is common business sense and a lot of the artists in this area don't know how or don't want to talk to people."

By getting involved in many of the new community initiatives and with the encouragement of Trenton's art lovers, Rainbow has displayed his large murals in parking lots in Trenton on Front Street, between West State and Warren streets and Café Olé and the Urban Word on South Broad Street.

"I want Trenton to be my gallery," Rainbow said. He believes that more public art will generate appreciation among residents. According to Rainbow, as it is, "most people just don't give a crap."

However, supported by the Mayor Douglas Palmer, the Trenton Arts Council and café owners downtown, Rainbow is just one of many artists living and working in Trenton. He acknowledges that the opening of new cafes and clubs has given a forum for artists to congregate, share ideas and collaborate on projects. For example, the concept for one of Rainbow's most successful paintings, "American Waste," sprang from a conversation with another artist. The painting depicts a television with feet, eyes and mouth and a blank stare fixed on the viewer.

"I was talking to someone about how TV sucks the life out of you, and we sit on our asses watching TV. So, I turned it around and had the TV sitting on its ass watching us," Rainbow explained.

Several times a week Rainbow attends poetry slams and readings at the Urban Word Café on South Broad Street with his friends - all local painters, sculptors, photographers, musicians and deejays.

"In just four years, I've seen everything change," Rainbow said. "The city is starting to wake up. I fell in love with it because I saw it was at a birth stage. It was at that time when everyone was starting to pull together."

Rainbow refers to a cultural renewal in Trenton that started a decade ago. Since the recent opening of cafes downtown like the Urban Word and Café Olé and the Riverfront Stadium - where the Trenton Thunder, a minor league baseball team affiliated with the Boston Red Sox, play - the city is making a distinct effort to eradicate the perception of Trenton as a dreary, industrial wasteland.

The 7.5-sq.-mile city is centrally located between Philadelphia and New York. Its train station is the sixth busiest in the nation and will undergo a $30 million renovation in the near future. Despite vast parking lots, abandoned factories and low-rise buildings, Trenton boasts an urban setting with the feel of a small town. The diverse population and 30 to 35 distinct neighborhoods, ranging from late federal to the stately Victorian townhouses in the Mill Hill district, give Trenton a creative vitality.

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But 30 years ago, Trenton's industrial, heavily labor-based economy began to bottom out as factories became obsolete, according to Dennis Gonzales, director of the city's housing and economic development agency.

"Trenton has been losing jobs and residents. Trenton once had 120,000 residents, but now there are 85,000," Gonzales said, explaining that the decline in manufacturing in the United States and growth in Japan and China has affected the companies in Trenton.

Trenton was once also a center for retail shopping, but the lure of suburban shopping malls like the area's Quakerbridge and Marketfair malls detracted from the city's downtown.

"Trenton used to have nine or 10 movie theaters, and the opening of malls in the late '50s and '60s moved shoppers away from Trenton," Gonzales said.

The city's growth is an effort supported by community partnerships. According to the official Trenton website, "economic revival can be seen through the creation of strong commercial areas within each neighborhood to offer a diversity of services." Not only are community members committed to the revival of the city, but the federal Economic Development Administration has also granted $2.3 million to help develop Trenton's Hill zone.

Gonzales mentioned that the non-profit organization Isles has been orchestrating the conversion of several buildings downtown into centers for technology and business, but the rehabilitation of the structures will allow for artist and gallery space.

"Offices moved out towards the suburbs and became 'campus-like.' That hurt cities substantially, but it looks like the trend in retail establishments is coming back. That's why we need to give opportunities to the entertainment and arts - to encourage people to spend money here after the government workers go home at 4:30," Gonzales said. "Then we will have people from Princeton here all the time."

Attracting out-of-town visitors to New Jersey's renewing capital city is a challenge, considering the renowned and established cultural opportunities in Princeton and New York City. "Trenton suffers not only because of a misconception problem - there is almost no street crime here - but also because of the proximity to Princeton," said Mark Feffer, 10-year resident of Trenton and editor of the Internet literary magazine TrentonWrites. "People think that the arts in Princeton is the only first-rate stuff and everything else is second rate."

"In actuality," Gonzales said, "the crime rate here is no different from that of Nassau Street, but there is that perception that creates an image for the entire city."

TrentonWrites, in conjunction with Café Olé and other merchants in downtown Trenton, organizes an open monthly event called First Fridays. Every first Friday of each month open mikes, poetry readings, gallery showings and theatre productions draw several hundred visitors and residents as Trenton stores extend their hours and encourage artists to exhibit their work. This cultural evening offers city dwellers and visitors a glimpse at the visual and performing arts and a taste of the culinary arts Trenton has to offer in a synchronized effort.

First Fridays is the brainchild of Café Olé owner James Griswold. Griswold grew up in suburban New Jersey and lived in Plainsboro when he decided, after all-too-many visits to Applebee's, Chili's and "vanilla" strip malls, to open a coffeehouse without a "cookie-cutter approach."

To that end, Griswold decided to open the cafe in Trenton.

"The city is improving economically, culturally and physically but not as quickly as I'd hoped. We're really starting to get some traction now. There's a renewed sense of excitement downtown," Griswold said. "[Owning a business in Trenton] is not as lucrative as owning a coffeehouse in Princeton, but there are other rewards as well. There's this pervasive, cooperative attitude in people that want to see a coffeehouse and neat bar make it. They want to see Trenton come back. There's a group of people who are supportive of Trenton, but they are disorganized. We need to get the word out about what's going on downtown."

Griswold said that Trenton acts as a haven for people who are "dissatisfied" with the suburban lifestyle and philosophy. Although Griswold now resides in Ewing, his social and professional lives revolve around Trenton.

Each month, Café Olé cooperates with Trenton's Reinhardt-Fisher Galleries to display a local artist's work. The café has also allowed Griswold to associate with "all the politicos." Griswold recalls conversations with Christie Whitman and Mayor Palmer, who frequents Café Olé.

A University student in the 1980s, John Hatch '84 would never have imagined living and working in Trenton. However, after attending architecture school in Virginia, Hatch took a position at a firm in Trenton in 1988. Hatch and fellow architect David Henderson worked together to refurbish houses in the Mill Hill district and by chance, met Roland Pott.

Pott, Hatch and Henderson hit it off. Sensing that Trenton was lacking a "funky, cool and interesting" place for local artists to meet, they opened the Urban Word Café.

"We knew that enough people here were artists, but that no one had tapped into it," Hatch said. "We thought there was a lot more that could happen . . . everything here [in the cafe] is geared towards art and entertainment. The whole point is to have as many kinds of events from as many kinds of media as possible."

Located in a larger complex that rents studio space to 29 sculptors, painters and web designers, the Urban Word's open mike serves as a springboard for promoting artists and poets. Several of the "outrageous" acts have gone on to compete in national poetry contests.

"It's awesome and inspiring to see the artists and performers. It's a mix of people from people who have signed gallery deals to people who are supporting themselves doing art and getting better," Henderson said, recalling one man who attended about 100 open mikes.

"He came every Tuesday for open mike and went from being a good performer to an excellent musician. He's now on a whole other level," he said.

This musician's road to success is a result of the evolution of Trenton from a center of manufacturing to a trendy entertainment district. As the bridge across the Delaware River flashes the words "Trenton makes, the World Takes," residents and commuters are reminded of the necessity for what the city produces. Now, Trenton makes art and with the help of the community, the artists are thriving.