Artwork by Melissa Escolas
When rock musician Jennifer Hill read about the first SWAN Day in 2008, she decided to create an event that would showcase women-fronted rock bands. SWAN Day Connecticut quickly grew to include women in performance art, dance, film, and visual arts. This year the event will feature 12 bands (chosen from over 100 submissions!) and 25 other women artists who will be performing, showing, and making performance art, dance, films, paintings, photography, and other visual art.
SWAN Day CT will be held this Saturday, March 30 at Kelly’s Pub, a beautiful old dance hall that features an upstairs ballroom and downstairs pub, at 69 North Street in Manchester, CT starting at 6 p.m. The amazing Kerry Kennedy will return this year to create a painting live on-stage during the band performances. You can hear audio clips and watch videos of the participating artists by visiting the SWAN Day CT Facebook page or their Reverbnation page.
Hill is recognized as an outstanding vocalist and pianist in Connecticut’s Indie scene (winner of Hartford Advocate Best Female Vocalist in 2009 & nominated for Best Singer/Songwriter at the Connecticut Music Awards in 2012). Through her SWAN leadership, she is a strong advocate for other women artists. For instance, this year she arranged for daily streaming of songs by SWAN artists on the internet radio station, Cygnus Radio, as well as airplay on broadcast radio station WESU-FM. She was featured in a television interview on WTNH about SWAN Day.
International Peace Belt
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SWAN Day CT is also partnering with the Artists for World Peace Foundation this year to showcase the International Peace Belt, a sterling silver belt designed and built by Connecticut jewelry-maker, Wendy Black-Nasta, as a symbol of world peace.
Draped with coins and gems representing 155 countries so far, the International Peace Belt has traveled to 25 countries on 5 continents since its completion in 2003. The belt has been worn during hundreds of artistic performances, sacred ceremonies, and at peaceful and spiritual gatherings in New York (Ground Zero), South Korea, Haiti, Spain, Brazil, Tanzania, Canada, Egypt, Tonga, Scotland, and elsewhere.
In making The International Peace Belt a part of their performances and ceremonies, hundreds of performers have become links in the belt’s symbolic joining of all nations. Wherever the belt travels, dancers, artists, musicians, peace activists, and spiritual leaders meditate on and lend their voices to support peace. At SWAN Day CT, a ballerina with the band Farewood will wear the belt.
To wear the International Peace Belt, the artists must agree to meditate on world peace while performing in the belt, and they must agree to become part of the full length documentary being made about the belt’s world journey. For more information, please visit: www.artistsforworldpeace.org
SWAN Day Connecticut at Kelly’s Pub, 69 North Street, Manchester, CT
Date & Time: Saturday, March 30, 2013, 6 p.m. to 1 a.m.
Tickets & More Information: www.showclix.com/event/3745207