Artists Wander Through Bregamos

The Wandering, an event organized by artists Anika Stewart and Elizabeth LaCroix Taylor, turned Bregamos Community Theater into an arts bazaar, music venue, and burlesque stage all at once on Saturday night.

Stewart and Taylor have been organizing arts events like the Wandering once or twice a year for a few years, ever since they met at Stewart’s first art show, at Barracuda, in 2016. ​“I don’t know why we meshed so well,” Stewart said of their meeting, in which they connected immediately. They began following each other on social media, then ​“put our heads together and put on a show, and we’ve been doing it ever since.”

She credits the events’ success to the talents of her friends, and to the fact that people keep showing up. ​“The New Haven community has never failed me,” Stewart said. ​“Everyone loves the arts and wants to support them.”

The Wandering began at 6 p.m. with a market featuring visual art, jewelry, food and drink, and a pleasant vibe in which to hang, with music provided by DJ Hot Toddie. One table featured art by New Haven-based artist Laura Rocco. Another table offered visitors information on Soléi Body Contouring Spa, located on Ella T. Grasso Blvd. Along the back wall, Madaline’s Empanaderia was quickly selling out of the empanadas brought to sell for the occasion.

In another corner of the room, Taylor had set up a small stand for her clothing line, with each piece featuring an image from one of her paintings. She traced getting into painting back to the first time she met Stewart in 2016. ​“I walked in and saw Anika, and she was so confident,” Stewart said. ​“I had painted one painting. She got me going.”

Taylor has been painting steadily ever since and in June took the leap to being a full-time artist, in part thanks to getting work as a muralist for markets, breweries, and other businesses, and and in part due to branching out into clothes. That began two years ago, when an artist friend asked if she wanted to make a limited run. She made 10 shirts and ​“they sold on the first day,” Taylor said. She began printing her designs from her paintings onto shirts, tank tops, and sweatshirts. Then ​“I invested in an embroidery machine,” and did a line of hats as well.

Meanwhile, along with ​“business partner and life partner” Georgina Gross, Stewart runs Your Queer Plant Shop. ​“We have between ourselves hundreds of plants. We talk about them all the time,” Stewart said. One evening, she said, inspired by an intense scene from the movie Fight Club, she asked Gross, “’What’s the one thing that you want to do?’ And they said, ​‘open a plant shop.’ We made a business plan, and fast forward, here we are.” Your Queer Plants owes some of its creation to the self-evaluation many have undergone during the pandemic, which has cultivated ​“a lot of hobbies, interests, and passions.”

Those passions were on display on the stage as the night progressed, beginning with Jemar Phoenix of The Hooch. The New Haven-born and raised musician described his journey from poetry into music as a young man, teaching himself guitar and moving from rapping to singing in high school inspired by Boys II Men. But he always knew he could combine all three elements, and one song he performed ​“was the first song where it all came together.”

Stewart took the microphone to recite a poem that was part welcome, part incantation. That was followed by a burlesque routine — a teaser of what was to come.

New York-based poet Kimane mellowed with his heartfelt poems, grounded in a keen sense of respect for others and humility in himself.

Bianca and Charlie graced the crowd with two separate performances of jazz standards, which Bianca sung in a style drenched in the smoky past while Charlie accompanied her on either light beatboxing or piano.

The back half of the night, however, belonged to Marion V Ette, who brought an increasing sense of humor and outrageousness to her performances that made the audience wonder what she was going to do next. A costume of balloons (“her outfit only cost 98 cents,” it was declared in her introductions) was teasingly popped, one after the other. Another routine reveled in a kind of old, sleazy Hollywood, done to a soulful cover of Prince’s ​“Purple Rain.” Toward the end of it, a microphone that had been teetering on a stand all night at the side of the stage at last gave up the ghost and flopped over, as if fainting from the heat.