Seeing Sounds Grows Into Second Year

Celine Who let out a melisma of notes that floated through the air of the skate park in Edgewood Park. They commingled with the voices of vendors and of friends chatting, the scents of arepas and vegan Caribbean food. On the other side of the skate park, Eastine Akuni pumped out music from a second stage to a crowd brought to their feet on the lawn in the shade. It was early in the day for the second year of Seeing Sounds, the music and art festival organized by Trey Moore. Already a few hundred had arrived, and many more were coming.

Seeing Sounds ballooned in size this year to include even more artists, and chances to see art, than it did last year. It started on Wednesday with a jam and open mic at Neighborhood Music School, proceeded through a night of film at Lyric Hall in Westville, and continued with music at Temple Plaza and a dance party at Stella Blues on Friday. Saturday, the main event, then featured over eight hours of music on two stages at Edgewood Skate Park. Early in the day, hundreds of people had already arrived, cheering for the musicians, sampling what an array of clothing, art, and food vendors had to offer, and enjoying the weather of a summer day.

Moore guessed that all told, the event was half again as large as it had been the first year, and drew artists from New Haven and well beyond — from Hartford, Bridgeport, New York, and Los Angeles, ​“people from all around,” he said. ​“People love music. People love community. That’s the core of why we exist.”

Seeing Sounds has arrived at a time of flux in the arts, in New Haven and beyond, as existing venues struggle or close, and it remains uncertain what will replace them. Moore drew a distinction between those spaces that put on music and the community of artists that create the music.

“These communities will always exist and thrive, despite clubs closing and venues closing. Many of those spaces don’t let us in anyway, when all we’re trying to do is this,” Moore said, gesturing at the festival around him. ​“Communities thrive even when they’re underground. The difference is we’re not underground. We’re not in a basement anymore. But we’ve always been around.”

Moore plans to continue to grow Seeing Sounds from year to year. ​“I think next year will naturally be bigger because people are drawn to it,” he said. He imagines that in two years ​“we’ll be a full-grown festival.” But ​“we’ll get there when we get there.”

That growth can happen without losing focus on what Moore sees as the heart of the festival. ​“It’s really about opportunity and equity, and chances for people to learn and thrive in a certain atmosphere.” It’s about nurturing ​“the ecosystem” of artists that exists around the festival. ​“How can we give people something that they’re proud of, that they feel a part of? So as big as this festival grows, it’s still going to be indie artists.”

Moore thanked Adriane Jefferson, the city’s director of cultural affairs, and Lizzy Donius, director of the Westville Village Renaissance Alliance, for their help while Moore was putting the festival together. ​“Lizzy’s been super helpful,” he said. She ​“has been an advocate for everything I’m doing. I appreciate people like that,” who recognize that ​“art is important. Art brings money and attention to your city. But it’s about supporting the artists as much as you love the art. That’s what Seeing Sounds is trying to do.”

“Things are going to change,” Moore said, regarding the future of Seeing Sounds and, in a broader sense, the arts ecosystem it emerged from. ​“Change is coming.”

Nehway was one of several artists playing the stage in the middle of Edgewood Skate Park. She drew a crowd of admiring onlookers for her songs about staying strong after heartbreak and about keeping healthy. The song ​“Save Yourself,” she said, was dedicated to those dealing with mental illness, offering compassion and sympathy.

The skatepark itself swarmed with skaters and bikers, dodging and weaving, encouraging one another and trading trick ideas.

In between sets the park still buzzed with activity, as DJs did short sets and people continued to enjoy food, check out the vendors, and just be in the summer sun.

Among the vendors was artist Tylor Hurd, 25 years old and based in Los Angeles, who got into drawing as a ​“way to escape reality,” she said. ​“I always try to create creatures and different worlds” in order to ​“help myself.” She has been making art professionally since 2016, after she graduated high school. ​“I didn’t know what else I would really do,” she said. ​“I love to always make art.” She also discovered that people were interested in buying her pieces.

She draws much of her inspiration from animation. A particular piece about her baby started because ​“I drew my baby first, and I didn’t just want to have her” as the illustration. But ​“she’s my whole world now,” so Hurd made it so, creating a mountain range from her back, letting a river flow from her mouth to the sea. ​“I drew my world around her,” Hurd said.

Another piece, of a woman with her back turned to a shadowy monster looming in the corner, is about ​“not letting those dark thoughts in the back of your head consume you,” she said. Those thoughts and fears, she has found, ​“are way smaller in reality” than they first appear.

Twenty-seven-year-old Ashley Innocent, a.k.a. Ashley the Creator, a Hartford-based artist, saw flyers calling for artists to vend at Seeing Sounds and applied. She gravitated toward art as a child. ​“Whenever there were arts and crafts, I would sneak out of my other clubs to be a part of that,” she said. She studied art sat University of Hartford and Tunxis Community College, and started making art professionally in 2016. 

“Seeing other creatives and my peers go for it also motivated me.” A few years before that, people who saw her art had started asking how much she might charge for it. She figured ​“I might as well do best to show in galleries and come out to these events, make prints and other products.” She has ideas to further expand by making her art ​“3‑D,” putting her images on clothing. She has started with bucket hats; she works with a manufacturer in the United Kingdom to produce them. ​“I’m just putting them out there to see what happens,” she said.

Innocent draws much of her inspiration from nature and the human body. Even in her more abstract pieces, ​“there’s always some human element,” she said. Two of her pieces explore the ways human and natural forms echo each other. ​“I like to morph ideas together, morph nature and human features together.” She has noticed how the grapes and coils of hair take on similar round shapes. A bundle of grapes can ​“look like a beard if you shape it properly.” She hopes that through her work, ​“people can see themselves in nature more.”

One piece focuses on her relationship to music. ​“With people in general, we have songs that speak to us in different moments, and sometimes as we evolve, the songs morph into something else,” she said. ​“A lot of music is connected to the heart.”