For 38 years, Art Yeas was the McMaster greenhouse manager. He could often be found diligently watering each plant, the top of his head peeking over a shrub. When he wasn’t nurturing his fauna, he was sharing his extensive knowledge and enthusiasm with students. Despite all the life around him, Yeas still stood out.

Unfortunately, Art Yeas passed away in early September, a loss that has been deeply felt in the McMaster community.

Robin Cameron is a professor in the Department of Biology at McMaster who worked closely with Yeas on developing the lab aspect of the second year “Biology 2D03: Plant Biology and Biotechnology” course. Cameron is aware of just how much thought Yeas put into mapping out the whole year ahead for students.

“We provide a lot of plant material during the course, and sometimes we need seedlings that are [various sizes] so that students can look at the development of the plant… He had this big board, cork board, with when to plant everything.”

Despite working a job whose description put him in the background, his dedication and effort did not go unnoticed by the students and community at large. He worked as a supervisor for students working on biology practicums, aided graduate students with research and was an integral component to undergraduate plant labs.

Yeas managed over 217 plants at a time, many of which he brought in of his own accord. The more outrageous, the more likely it was that Yeas had ordered them. Susan Dudley, also a professor in the Biology department, attributes the diversity of plant life in the greenhouse to Yeas’ quirky tastes.

“He loved weird and interesting and outrageous plants, so we have a lot of those. We have a great collection of carnivorous plants for example… and we have plants that move, and just kind of amazing, or pretty, or bizarre dyed orchids for example… He was working on maintaining the collection; he was looking at propagating our chocolate tree… He had just gotten in a shipment of seeds, including seeds of indigenous varieties… and some strange seeds that we aren’t even sure what they are.”

His acquisition of the Titan Arum corms brought crowds of visitors through the greenhouse this past year. The six-foot tall flowers are infamous for their odour which resembles that of rotting flesh, but bloom beautifully for no more than a few days. Dudley remembers how the plants brought out Yeas’ giddy side.

“When the Titan Arum was blooming, he decided he was going to keep the greenhouse open to 11 o’clock at night. He was not sleeping very much at night. He was surviving on Red Bull and telling people stories. When I had gone away he set up a fog machine, because he liked the atmosphere.”

For the last few years of his life, Yeas could not sit still. He acquired the Titan Arums; he grew bamboo shoots to feed the Giant Pandas at the Toronto Zoo. Cameron believes that Yeas put the greenhouse on the map.

This past July, Yeas was awarded the 2014 President’s Award for Outstanding Service. The award is for any McMaster employee that is nominated for their meaningful contribution to university life. Other members of the community write letters in support of each nominee, justifying why they deserve the title. Art Yeas won—not because of anything a paper said, but because he had won over the community.

Art Yeas had big plans ahead for the greenhouse. Cameron knows that he was hoping to replace the old greenhouse, which is costly and inefficient, with a newer model.

“The long-term goal was to have a new greenhouse…That was the last thing I did with Art… in August. [We] visited Vineland, which is an agricultural research station run by Ontario… They have a new greenhouse that’s just being completed, so we toured this new greenhouse to see what new innovations they have today. And Art was so excited, and just so thrilled that we would have, maybe, a new greenhouse.”

Whether the plan for a new greenhouse is realized or not, it is because of Yeas that the option is even on the horizon. No one is going to forget about Yeas any time soon. He embodied the greenhouse and it now embodies him—a physical reminder of a member of the McMaster community who will be dearly missed by many.

Photo Credit: Jon White/Photo Editor

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While discussion happens within the office to appreciate a person’s accomplishments in life, no matter how large or small they may seem to passive participants, it is difficult for anyone to have a clear state of mind following a death. It is even more difficult for an author to write a piece that they can be comfortable in publishing. You only get the one chance to represent an entire person’s life.

Perhaps it is fitting then that we admired and respected ASAP Yams to the degree we do. He was not a well-known figure to the public, many people confusing him for an active artist based on his prominently featured ASAP prefix, but he operated behind the scenes in a way many of us could only wish to achieve. His ability to manage and find the perfect people to work together in a matchmaker mentality, his sheer dedication to hip-hop, and his vision and passion for music all remain constant sources of inspiration for anyone involved in any way with the arts.

Though he was never behind the mixing boards of a studio, Steven Rodriguez helped form the styles and nuisances of numerous prominent artists known today through his breadth and depth of music knowledge. Through his Yamborghini Records side-project, he worked with and developed Dash, Vince Staples, Aston Matthews, and Joey Fatts, and had some degree of influence with Flatbush Zombies, Action Bronson, Freddie Gibbs, and Danny Brown as evident by guest appearances.

His best known work, however, was with the ASAP crew. Everyone in ASAP owes their founder their careers. Cultivating their talents, matching up their flows, mannerisms, and lyrical content with a balance between artistic legitimacy, mainstream appeal, and constant tweaks and adjustments to match their development can very rarely be done on a singular basis. To manage to do this with an entire group of people on top of his side work is extraordinary.

We honour ASAP Yams because we can all connect to him. We are not always admired and idolized for our work and passion, but we do it anyway because of our internal drive and motivation. ASAP Yams represents everyone who has ever not been respected or appreciated to the degree they should be.

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