I Watched the Local Art Show I Love Turn into Deadly Chaos

For many in Trenton, New Jersey, Art All Night was the one thing you really looked forward to. For 12 years now, the 24-hour festival has been held in a converted warehouse, the same joint in which they once made the famous cables of the Brooklyn Bridge, a place where people could paint and dance and listen to music and forget their city's (and their own) troubles. After all, Trenton has its fair share of problems—from gun violence to poverty to the lack of even a single hotel to bolster tourism, not to mention a paucity of of community-oriented events. Art All Night, meanwhile, starts at 3 PM and ends at that time the next day—or at least it did. This year, about halfway through, an alleged gang dispute crescendoed into violence—a mass shooting that left more than 20 wounded, and one of the suspects dead.

Talking to the artists in this community early this week, I heard the same thing emphasized again and again: This festival has always been something truly positive. It's a way not only to bring different types of Trentonites together, but to dispel the often negative perception the outside world has of the state capital. And while the city's slogan, "Trenton makes, the world takes," might not be so true any longer—industry has gone, restaurants have shuttered their doors and relocated—many there are still trying.

Leon Rainbow is one of them. Born in San José, California, he moved to Trenton 20 years ago, kicked a drug habit, and never left. Now he's a local graffiti artist (who works under the "Rainbow" moniker) and the founder of the popular hip-hop festival Jersey Fresh Jam. He was painting a mural at AAN when the shooting took place, he recalled.

Below, Rainbow describes what he witnessed that night, and how he—and other Trenton-based artists—move on from here.

The vibe was definitely different this time around. The organizers and the police tried to shut the festival down, but there were just too many people. At like 1 AM—I don’t remember exactly what time, though, because it’s hard to tell time while I’m painting, and I was also selling merchandise—I noticed more and more people standing in front of my booth, drinking and smoking and checking out girls. There’s nothing wrong with that, but they clearly weren't there for the art. That's when I shut my booth down. Not long before that, there had been a scuffle. The police brought dogs out, and they were trying to move the crowd using the animals, which was somewhat surreal and disappointing to me. They were telling everyone to either go into the gallery or leave. I obviously didn’t know there was about to be a shooting, and I didn't think I needed to leave yet—that very instant—but I could tell there was a chance for more fights or something.

Right before the shooting, I was packing my stuff up. I had a bunch of things, and because there were so many people in the building, it took me 15 minutes to make my first trip to the car. My partner and I had been working on a mural, and we decided we were going to leave and come back to finish it up in the morning. He said he'd help bring everything else to the car after he went to the bathroom. Maybe two minutes after he left, it was just, like, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop.

That was the first succession of gunshots—maybe 15 or so. I saw people running, so I started running. I ducked in where they had been doing glass-blowing—I figured it was a good spot, because it was walled in, and there was an entrance and exit nearby. Somebody came out and said, "I think I’ve been hit," and he was bleeding out of his back. I was going to get up after that, but I heard another person say there was still a guy with a gun, so I stayed down against the wall. Then there was the second, and final, succession of shots—maybe another, like, 15 of them. They sounded like they were closer, but I'm not sure—they could have been on the other side of me somewhere. I was constantly checking to see if I had been hit and didn't notice.

It felt like it all lasted a very long time, but it was probably only a few minutes. After that, I started to pack up again. The police had tried to clear the area, but they didn't really. They had calmed it down, though, and then they basically told us we couldn't go anywhere or bring anything outside, so I left all my art and equipment there. We had to wait for three hours for the cops to question us, which ended up being brief. I'm still waiting for them to clear the scene, so I can go back and get my car, too—because that was parked on the side street, which is now part of the crime scene.

The artist community in Trenton, it's not really large, but it's very close-knit. A lot of the resurgence in the arts began with the graffiti and street art. When I came here, I met [the street artist Will] Kasso, and we worked a lot together. We started Jersey Fresh Jam, and we started doing murals throughout the city. I've been involved in Art All Night since its inception, 12 years ago.

It's just sad that this occurred at all. I’m still processing it, but when I think about it, in a broader sense, this city has been violent. I feel like it's hard to look at what happened at Art All Night without looking at the rest of the city. I mean, summer's just starting—I’m sure we're going to have shootings in the next few months. It's like most inner cities—much of the violence is secluded to certain areas, so I feel like it really hasn't affected a festival that's had such a crossover effect.

Really, art has been one of the good things here. I've traveled and painted all over the country, but Trenton, in particular, has been so supportive. The arts really brought people together. I've done projects in some of the worst areas here, in some of the most dangerous areas, in places where, maybe, people probably shouldn't do them. And it was like that, too, with Art All Night. We never had an issue. It was a real free festival. Everybody could participate, and that's what I want people to know: that this was such a positive event for this community. It was the biggest thing. People came from all over the East Coast. And anyone who was in this area, like that was on their radar—like, What am I going to do for Art All Night? I’ve created pieces specifically for it, and a lot of preparation went into it, both on the organization's and the artists' part. And I would see people that I haven't seen in a year, and I would meet new people, too.

Now, obviously, there’s going to be more security, but part of the reason we've been so successful in Trenton is because our art thing was so wild and free. There's a little bit of pointing fingers about what went down, but the only people, to me, who should be blamed are the people who started shooting. Because I don't think there was anything that anyone else could have done that they didn't do—the police tried to disperse the crowd, and they did what they could. As far as the organizers—like, everyone's on the news talking about metal detectors, and, you know, after 12 years of doing this, and not having any incidents, maybe we were—maybe they were, and maybe us and the city—were a little bit naïve. Because who's going to think that someone's going to come shoot up something? It's like a school shooting—you might see some signs, maybe, but you can't really predict that.

I still feel like we can do anything, though. We've done it. For the past 15 years or so, since I moved here, we've always been thinking about the future, about the next interesting project we can do. And we had been doing things on a shoestring budget—but recently there have been more grants. It's so crazy, because we've come so far, and this is a bit of a setback. But what's hard for me is that people around the country—I have family in California and Florida—they didn't see all the positive nights that we've had over the past decade. They only see this shooting, and that's the most disheartening thing.

But Trenton's resilient. Initially, I was, like, it'll never be the same—I was saying this to someone right after it went down. But, after really thinking about it, I know we're going to use it as a rallying cry. We're going to pull through this. We're going to come together, and it's going to be a stronger community. Obviously, there will have to be some changes made, but I'm going to continue painting murals, and doing my projects and events.

We're going to turn this tragedy into something positive.

This account has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

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