Brian Slattery Photos
New Haven-based ska band The Simulators had finished the second song of its skank-filled set at College Street Music Hall on Saturday afternoon when bassist Zachary Yost had a question: “Who’s enjoying spending all their money on all these lovely local vendors?” He meant the dozens of artists and artisans who had jammed into the place for the College Street Punk Rock Holiday Flea, which, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., changed the College Street performance space into a bazaar for original art, thrift clothing, instruments, records, and much more.
The event was a decidedly multigenerational affair, as people old enough to be in the first generation of punks mingled with teenagers, and middle-aged parents brought their young children. The size of the crowd contributed to the feeling of festivity, as people thronged the walkways, mingling with one another and with the vendors, who were seen to smile often as they engaged with customer after potential customer.
Threading their way through the crowd were a duo of Krampus — a figure from central European folklore who functions as the mirrored partner of St. Nicholas, punishing kids who have been naughty while St. Nick rewards those who have been nice — and a handler who invited adults and children alike to get their pictures taken with the horned entity. Many took them up on their offer.
The crowd only seemed to grow throughout the early afternoon, for the duration of this reporter’s visit. Among the vendors was Tim Sway of the Meriden-based New Perspectives Music, with an array of guitars and basses all made from reclaimed and salvaged wood. “I was a full-time, touring, performing musician for most of my life,” Sway said, “and that meant that I was always broke.” So he began learning how to fix things — furniture he found on the side of the road, and his own instruments when they needed maintenance. “I really got interested in it.” He began working in a guitar workshop in the 1990s. “We were buying mahogany, and I’m making guitars,” and got into a meditative space one day while sanding. “I started thinking, ‘if this wood is coming from Africa, what’s the carbon footprint of this?’ I didn’t use those then, because it was the ’90s, but I was thinking about the journey it took, the expense, the child labor, and it really started to bother me. Do we have to deforest Africa to make music?”
He began to question whether instrument makers needed to make their instruments out of specific materials, and to experiment with what else was possible. He made an instrument for himself out of a water ski. “I started seeing a market for this, to change people’s hearts and minds about how we’re making music. Everybody sings about saving the planet but they’re not doing anything about it.”
He now works with reclaimed wood, which could mean “anything from a pallet that I found on the side of the road to a historic building that’s being torn down.” He takes slabs of wood from tree cutters he comes across, and dismantles office furniture. Some instruments are made from a batch of closet doors he got dating from the 1970s; the plywood is made from tropical hardwood. Another guitar is made from his neighbor’s fence. “People throw all these things away, and I try to find a use,” he said. He has also started building his own electronics for electric guitars, and venturing into acoustic guitars as well.
He has learned his craft through diligence and curiosity. “The first 20 guitars I made were terrible!” he said. “They get better every time, as I knew they would. You can’t be afraid to fail, not afraid to take chances. If someone tells me, ‘you can’t do it this way,’ I’m not afraid to find out why the hard way.” Now, 20 years later, he said, people say “you can’t build a guitar out of that,” and he says “what do you mean? I just did. I’m playing it right now.”
Sway leans into the way the instruments were created in the way they look, as though they were made from other things, carefully put back together and ready to be played. “I try to show the history, to show the story,” he said.
Closer to the stage, Hannah Francis was selling her original artwork, as prints, stickers, patches, and clothing. As her website states, “my work has evolved to putting the pun in femme punk. My goal with illustration is to create dynamic 2‑D drawings that spark joy, comforting relatability, and humor in my viewers.”
“I just kept doing it,” Francis said regarding how she developed her style. She went to school for illustration and considered being an art therapist, until she did an internship and thought “I think I hate this,” she said with a laugh. Shortly afterward she saw a T‑shirt in Urban Outfitters that had a banana on it and said “later hater.” “It was such a stupid illustration and it gave me so much joy,” she said. She had a small realization: “It doesn’t have to mean anything. I just like it.” She started making work “that I wanted to see around — stuff that’s lighthearted and makes you laugh.” She found herself gravitating toward using strong linework, with half-tones for blending, reminiscent of comics.
As for the subject matter — whether it’s a flower driving a motorcycle, a green dog with a loose eye riding a skateboard, or a sphinx cat with a mohawk surrounded by lightning bolts — “a lot of it is just inspired by my life,” Francis said. “I’ll take certain moments of my life and it’s just me owning it, embracing my thoughts and getting them out there.” The drawing of the sphinx cat, for instance, came out of the fact that she wanted to have a cat but knew she might not be a very good pet owner. “So that’s the way I channeled that,” she said. “If I can’t have one, I can have this drawing of one, and then I can own it via copyright.”
She has found that it’s “a really good way to build community and to meet likeminded people,” she said. “A lot of my best friends, I’ve met through vending.” Looking out across the expanse of the flea market, it was easy to see how.
