New Arts Collective Gets Rooted At Koffee?

Demeree Douglas, Jade Streater, Nox Amore, Alana Ladson, Akosua Aidoo and Kaelynne Hernandez. Lucy Gellman Photos. 

Jade Streater found precious and consistent time to paint each week. Akosua Aidoo got the encouragement she needed to put her art front and center—and open a new window to self-discovery along the way. For Nox Amore, it was the outlet they needed to make new work around climate change, and put to scratchboard a wave of emotions they’d been feeling. 

All of them are members of the Rooted Collective, a new grassroots group of six artists of color that artist Alana Ladson has brought together through weekly artmaking sessions and candid conversation. For the past six weeks, artists have met each Tuesday evening at The Sandbox, a free meeting and making space that the Arts Council of Greater New Haven runs at 70 Audubon St.

Thursday, all six attended an exhibition opening at Koffee? On Audubon Street, the first of three scheduled to take place this fall. In the interest of full transparency, the Arts Paper is a program of the Arts Council of Greater New Haven but is editorially independent from it. 

The first cohort of the collective includes Ladson and artists Jade Streater, Kaelynne Hernandez, Nox Amore, Demeree “D” Douglas and Akosua Aidoo. All are from New Haven and Hamden; many are building their lives as professional artists in the city. 

“I wanted to make a collective of artists in New Haven and I really wanted artists to get paid,” said Ladson, nibbling at the edges of a baguette sandwich in between thoughts. “As artists, we do the work of keeping track of the world,” and yet they’re often not paid or underpaid for it. She wanted to flip that script.  

The collective came into being earlier this year, after Ladson received a $10,000 “Artists Corps” grant from the Arts Council and National Endowment for the Arts. With that funding, she was able to design a program, build a cohort, implement weekly sessions and—most important to her mission—set aside time for artists to make work and get paid. Each session began with an hour of discussion, followed by two hours of artmaking. 

Like Fair-Side, a community of practice that artist Ruby Gonzalez Hernandez founded earlier this year, the work they made during meetings wasn’t for the churn of art consumerism. It was first and foremost for them.  

In its first iteration, the collective was designed specifically for women and nonbinary artists of color, with a focus on Black, Brown and Indigenous artists. Ladson said that for her, creating that space was especially significant because it was something she’d been missing for her whole life. While she grew up loving art in New Haven, this summer marked the first time that she met many of the cohort’s members, who she now considers peers and friends.    

Work by Akosua Aidoo (left) and Demeree Douglas (right).

“I just didn’t see diversity in the way that I needed to see it [before the collective],” she said. For years, “I was like, ‘Where are all the quirky Black people at?’ … That was the whole point. To bring people together and watch them blossom. This is giving people the space to grow and to bloom.”

As a steady trickle of attendees came through Koffee? Thursday, every member of the cohort noted how transformative the collective has been for them. Streater, who has two young sons and works full-time as a custodian at Yale, pointed to the weekly sessions as a kind of gift that she couldn’t have expected before this year.

As a parent who is also holding down a full-time job, she doesn’t always have time for her art. While she’s always found artmaking therapeutic, she said, her own creative schedule “is pretty random,” because so much of her life revolves around her children. With weekly sessions, Rooted gave her a chance to return to something she’s loved from her days in elementary and middle school at Hill Central School to her high school years at Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School.

“It wasn’t just professional … It was personal. I’m looking to see where it goes from here.”

“We created a sisterhood,” she said, adding that she brings her skill set to everything from paint parties in the city to face painting at Black Wall Street New Haven. “It wasn’t just professional … It was personal. I’m looking to see where it goes from here.”

Around her, attendees paused to look at her pieces, including multiple bright canvases and a multimedia collage in the back of the space. In one, installed beside a lamp, two brown palms cradled a beating, hydrant-red heart, a lock waiting at its center. In another, Streater brought a woman’s face gradually into focus, her eyes, full red lips and ears emerging from a maze of intricate patterns and geometric lines. 

“My art is a mix of everything,” Streater said as attendees took the time to study each detail of the work. Two strings of paper cranes, left over from the exhibition Sprinkle Factory fluttered gently above it in a burst of color.   

That sense of having time and support also resonated for Aidoo, who recently left her job as a certified nursing assistant to pursue her artwork full time. Born and raised in Hamden, Aidoo has been interested in visual art for decades, she said—but went into different work when teachers discouraged her from pursuing it. Then last year, she was spending time drawing with a friend and remembered how much she’d missed it. 

Aidoo with two of her canvases.

She started churning out canvases, sometimes working for hours on designs that flowed from her imagination through her paintbrush. When she found the collective, she said, it felt instinctively right. She praised the support of Ladson and her cohort mates, with whom she’s been able to talk openly about being an artist of color in a town that often feels short on resources for creatives. This summer, she’s also been able to mount a solo show at Mercy by the Sea in Madison.      

“We’re all like, really different, but we’re similar too,” she said. “It feels like everyone just got each other. Through my artwork, I’m trying to discover myself.” 

“I feel like a little kid!” she added of the opening. “And I feel like this is just the beginning.” 

Standing a few feet from a multimedia piece of hers celebrating Black hair, Douglas described the collective as a rare and needed affinity space, where she could talk to other artists of color about feeling boxed out creative opportunities. In New Haven, she’s noticed that there’s no central hub for artists to find grants, career opportunities, and open calls for vendors. Prior to the show, she didn’t know that artists were welcome to pitch their own exhibitions at Koffee?  

Demeree "D" Douglas, who knew Ladson from a mural project, said the collective was a space for her to bounce ideas off other like-minded artists. 

Sometimes, she said, she’ll talk to other artists who are landing opportunities, and think “But what about me?”     

“You have a collective of people who are like, ‘No, it’s not just you girl,’” she said. Behind her, the work announced itself in color and three-dimensional texture against the cafe’s white brick wall. “It forced me to be disciplined and to create every week.”    

Across the room, three multimedia pieces from Hernandez’ body of work peeked out from a red brick wall, suspended over a mess of pillows and cushions where the artist sat. In each, different iterations of a circle emerged, one radiating raised, rounded spokes while another bloomed into a pulsing, garnet-colored flower and almost mitochondrial circle. 

For attendees who saw Fair-Side’s inaugural exhibition at the Fair Haven Branch Library earlier this year, the work may have looked familiar. “I like the circles,” she said. “It shows cycles, completion. I think I’m striving for all of those things in my life.”

“It felt comforting,” she added of the collective. “At the end, I was like, ‘I didn’t realize how much I needed that.’ Before the collective, I was unsure of my path. They showed me there’s many ways to be an artist.” 

That was also true for Amore, who was able to expand their craft through their time in the collective. Known primarily as a jewelry artist, they were grateful for the space to experiment with and grow their scratchboard practice. That was particularly true this summer, as they embarked on a series addressing the very present and growing threat of climate change. 

In part, it was directly influenced by New Haven’s smoggy and campfire-scented skies in June, as smoke from Canadian wildfires choked the city and turned breathing into a danger, particularly for high-risk groups. Amore, who has for months been experimenting with scratch paper, started exploring scratchboard. 

“What was going through my mind was trying to get the doom and urgency of that moment,” they said. “There’s something haunting and morbid and beautiful … sort of this morbid togetherness. Like, we’re not going through this alone.” 

In the finished piece, a sort of winged demon-bird descends on City Hall, downtown New Haven blooming on all sides. People scamper through the foreground—presumably the New Haven Green—their bodies transformed into skeletons with big, bulging skulls and hollow eye sockets.

“It’s a reminder of human hubris, the ability of people to deny something that is right there, in front of their face.. It feels like screwed up social conditioning. I had to draw it. I had to put it to canvas.” The collective, they added, was there to support them as they did. 

As she buzzed through the space, checking in with both artists and attendees, Ladson said that was a hope of the collective. Growing up, she didn’t see herself reflected in books, movies, television or popular artwork. Now, she has a group of artists of color who have become her colleagues, confidants, cheerleaders and collaborators. 

As she finalizes two more upcoming exhibitions, she plans to hold monthly cohort meetings and would like to offer a second paid cohort at some point in the near future.  

“What we’re doing is life-changing work, quite frankly,” she said. “When you see an artist doing their thing, it liberates you to do what you love.” 

 The first exhibition of the Rooted Collective’s work runs at Koffee? on Audubon Street in New Haven through Sept. 30, 2023. A second section of the exhibition will open Sept. 21 at Blue Orchid, 130 Court St. in New Haven.