Painting Created During SWAN Festival Bulgaria 2014
For the past four years Dessi Dimova and the other women of SWAN Festival Bulgaria have found wonderfully creative ways to bring the spirit of Support Women Artists Now Day to their country. Their past events have included a variety of exhibits, performances, and workshops, including a class where people learned how to make swan designs with the steamed milk in their cappucinos!
If you are looking for a fun SWAN project for visual artists, the Bulgarian women created a great model last year. For SWAN Day 2014 they recruited 8 women artists to create a group painting in the middle of the upscale Bulgaria Mall in Sofia. They decided to create a larger-than-life woman’s face that would reflect the theme of diversity.
The final piece (which you can see in more detail on their Facebook page) is created of twelve canvases which are each one foot square. Each artist painted or used collage techniques to create one or two squares, and the composite woman’s face has a wonderful variety of textures and racial/ethnic characteristics. The prominent multi-colored eyes suggest the power of women working together and looking hopefully towards the future. You could do a SWAN group painting anywhere, but it was an inspired touch for the Bulgarian women to create this giant Amazon face in the midst of a busy shopping mall so that the shoppers could have a direct connection with women artists and woman-centered art. As an added bonus, young women in classic swan ballet costumes passed out refreshments to the shoppers and gave them information about SWAN Day.
At the end of the day, the artists posed with their squares while showing their solidarity with women artists around the world by doing the official SWAN Salute (one hand up to look like a swan’s head). You can see a larger version of the picture below on their Facebook page. Mirella Karadjova has also posted a 12-minute video on YouTube showing the creation of the piece.
Bulgarian Women Artists Show the Work They Created at SWAN Day 2014