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Jessica Cerdena Photo courtesy of Catherine King New Haven, Conn. (February 9, 2024) –This is the story of New Haven, shaped by migrants from Italy, Ukraine, Poland, Ireland, Russia, and Black workers from the southern United States. So many women migrants have a shared experience of encountering racism, economic oppression, and sexism and yet have summoned cognitive and social strategies to build futures for their families. New Haven family physician and anthropologist Jessica P. Cerdeña will discuss the ways Latin American migrant mothers have persevered amid trauma, legal violence, political hostility and more during, “Pressing Onward: The Imperative Resilience of Latina Migrant Mothers,” at the New Haven Museum on Thursday, March 14, 2024. at 6 p.m. (Snow date, March 21). Register here. This free NH250 event will also stream on FB Live. Cerdeña notes that while the decision to migrate from Latin America is fraught with danger, destabilization and isolation, for many, the advantages of life in the U.S. outweigh the struggle. Based on her book of the same title, Cerdeña’s lecture will focus on the stories of mothers who migrated from Latin America to New Haven and overcame trauma and ongoing adversity to build futures for their children. These migrant mothers enact what Cerdeña calls “ imperative resilience,” engaging cognitive and social strategies to resist racial, economic, and gender-based oppression to seguir adelante, or press onward. It is a story that will likely resonate with many women who themselves—or whose ancestors—immigrated to the U.S. “Pressing Onward” grew out of Cerdeña’s longstanding work with migrant communities in New Haven, first as a clinical student working at a local free clinic and then as an anthropologist. The women disclosed their challenges migrating and living here—including during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic—and the powerful strategies they used to get by in the day-to-day. Many women repeated that their stories needed to be told, which pushed her to complete her book.

Mary Ann Goodman's Grave New Haven, Conn. (February 9, 2024) – New Haven Museum’s newest exhibition, “Shining Light on Truth: New Haven, Yale, and Slavery,” will open on Friday, February 16, 2024. Presented by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and Yale University Library, the exhibition was curated by Michael J. Morand with Charles E. Warner, Jr., and designed by David Jon Walker. The show will remain on view through summer, 2024. Admission to the New Haven Museum will be free during the show’s run, made possible by Yale University. The exhibition team and the New Haven Museum will host a special event on Saturday, February 17, 2024. Morand, Walker, and Warner will offer introductory remarks at 1 p.m., followed by a screening of the Beinecke Library documentary, “What Could Have Been,” at 1:30 p.m. Refreshments will be served. The curatorial and design team will give brief introductory remarks again at 2 and 3 p.m., with additional screenings of the documentary at 2:30 and 3:30 p.m. The exhibition complements the publication of the new book “Yale and Slavery: A History,”(Yale University Press, 2024) by David W. Blight with the Yale and Slavery Research Project and draws from the research project's key findings in areas such as the economy and trade, Black churches and schools, the 1831 Black college proposal, and memory and memorialization in the 20th century and today. The exhibition has a special focus on stories of Black New Haven, including early Black students and alumni of Yale. "Shining Light on Truth" presents evidence of the essential role of enslaved and free Black people in New Haven and at Yale. It celebrates Black resistance and community building. And it illuminates knowledge kept alive in archives and memory for more than three centuries—even when the dominant culture choses to ignore, bury, or forget. The exhibition features archival images of materials from Beinecke and other collections, connects to items in the New Haven Museum collections, and notes other local sites of memory. It introduces visitors to some of the unheralded builders of Yale. It celebrates early Black writers such as Jupiter Hammon, Jacob Oson, and William Grimes, and it showcases women such as Mary Ann Goodman, whose generosity opened paths for Black students at Yale, as well as the women who were local pioneers in Black education early in the 19th century. The exhibition is located in the museum’s upper rotunda and an adjacent gallery room. That gallery has been made into a reading room that evokes a library of the Black college proposed, and thwarted, in New Haven in 1831. Visitors can view dozens of photographs of early Black Yale students and alumni, a number of whom grew up in New Haven. This reading room also features “school albums” with images and biographies of nearly 200 early Black Yale students, from James W. C. Pennington in the 1830s to Shirley Graham a century later in the late 1930s. It will also have bookcases with related texts and reproductions of archival materials. Visitors are encouraged to sit, read, and reflect in this library space. “This is a deeply meaningful New Haven story that we are honored to host,” says New Haven Museum Executive Director Margaret Anne Tockarshewsky. “‘Shining Light on Truth’ supports the New Haven Museum’s continuing mission to connect with the community and expand our audiences.” She adds, “We are grateful to Yale for making that possible by underwriting free admission during the course of the show and ensuring access to all who want to visit.” Morand is director of community engagement at Beinecke Library. He authored a chapter in "Yale and Slavery: A History" and has been a leader in the research project's research and work. A New Havener for four decades, he chairs the Friends of the Grove Street Cemetery and is on the boards for the Dixwell Q House and the Community Foundation. Warner is a graduate of Morehouse College and works with the New Haven Public Schools. He chairs the Dixwell Church History Committee, is a member of the Yale and Slavery Working Group and is a Beinecke Community Engagement Fellow. Warner is chairman of the Connecticut Freedom Trail, a collection of 160 sites and institutions throughout Connecticut related to the history of slavery, abolition, and Black history. Walker earned his MFA in graphic design from Yale in 2023. He has a BA in art from Tennessee State University and an MFA in web design from the University of Memphis. Before coming to New Haven, he was a professor in design at Austin Peay State University in Tennessee. He is Artist in Residence this year at Yale's Jonathan Edwards College. Morand, Walker, and Warner express their gratitude to scores of colleagues and collaborators whose effort and support have been essential to this exhibition, with special thanks to everyone at the New Haven Museum, to Yale President Peter Salovey and Susan Gibbons, Vice Provost for Collections and Scholarly Communications and Chief of Staff to the President of Yale, and to research and writing colleagues Jennifer Coggins and Hope McGrath, among others, in Yale Library.

Tammy Denease portraying Sarah Margu Photo courtesy of Old State House New Haven, Conn. (February 8, 2024) – Sarah Margu was just nine years old when she was sold into slavery, marched 80 miles to the West African coast, held in the notorious Dunbomo slave pens, and then trafficked to Cuba. In 1839, Margu was one of four children among the 53 captives aboard the schooner La Amistad, headed toward a life of slavery until they led a rebellion to protect their freedom. Following the revolt, and seizure of the Amistad, the captives were imprisoned in New Haven. As portrayed by the Executive Artistic Director of Hidden Women Stage Company Tammy Denease, Margu will share her story at the New Haven Museum on Saturday, March 9, 2024, at 3 p.m. This free NH250 event will also stream on FB Live. Register here. On March 9, 1841, the Supreme Court ruled that the Amistad captives  had been illegally enslaved and had thus exercised a natural right to defend their freedom. Margu’s first-person presentation, “Sarah Margu: A Child of the Amistad,” will share the moving details of her journey, her life in the Northeast, and what is today, Sierra Leone, and how she became the first African to graduate college in the United States. Margu will discuss how she became a deeply conflicted woman rooted in two different cultures, on two different continents. After gaining her freedom through the landmark legal victory in 1841, Margu lived in Farmington, Connecticut, and was educated by abolitionists. She was one of the 35 Amistad survivors who returned to their homeland. In 1846, 14-year-old Margu returned to the United States, and later graduated from Oberlin College, the first U.S. college to admit Black students. . Noting that many people are aware of the legal aspects of the Amistad saga, Denease says that she will share the human side of the story. “After my performances people have a different outlook and appreciation for the Amistad captives as being human, and not just cargo.” Denease was born in Columbus, Mississippi, where she spent countless hours with her great-grandmother, a former enslaved person, and her grandmother. Both women were centenarians and noted storytellers. Denease’s upbringing instilled in her a passion for history. As a storyteller in her own right, she brings history to life, taking viewers back in time to better understand the past, and how it led to the present. Denease specializes in strengthening public appreciation for noteworthy black women, holding her enlightening presentations at museums, schools, and historical sites across New England. As outreach director of the Connecticut Freedom Trail she teaches children colonial history, health, medicine, and slavery and Native-American history. Visitors may also view the museum’s updated Amistad exhibition. The revitalized exhibition centers the experiences of the captives—their resistance to enslavement and their collective action to determine their own lives. The exhibition also focuses on New Haven as the site of their incarceration, and abolitionist organizing throughout the legal process, leading to the landmark Supreme Court decision. On display are historic and contemporary artistic representations of Amistad that convey the power of the arts to raise awareness and shape collective memory. The museum’s distinguished Amistad collection includes Nathaniel Jocelyn’s renowned portrait of Sengbe Pieh, leader of the revolt (referred to as Cinqué by enslavers and in court records), a painting of the schooner La Amistad from 1839, a letter from Kale, one of the children of the Amistad, a letter from John Quincy Adams, who argued successfully on behalf of the Amistad prisoners before the U.S. Supreme Court, and Hale Woodruff’s 1939 original studies for the Amistad murals at Talladega College. New items from the museum’s collection will be displayed when the exhibition opens.

Old Lyme, Connecticut – February 8, 2024 Musical Masterworks has an eventful March planned with its annual contemporary chamber music concert, MMModern on March 1st and its main series concerts on March 16th and 17th. The MMModern concert will feature Nate’s World, on March 1st at Lyme Art Association at 90 Lyme Street in Old Lyme from 5:30pm – 7:30pm.  $45 admission includes complimentary beer, wine and appetizers before the concert. Nate’s World is comprised of dynamic musicians using their roots in the classical tradition to explore all the different music they love. Artistic Director, Tessa Lark on violin will join Nathan Farrington on bass, Gabriel Globus-Hoenich on percussion and Ahmed Alom on piano. Together they will develop a unique program for the concert, giving them a chance to write, arrange, and perform whatever is musically influencing them in the moment.  Enjoy an hour of unique arrangements from classical to country and lots in-between. On March 16th at 5pm and 17th at 3pm Musical Masterworks will unite with nearest and dearest, Artistic Director Emeritus Edward Arron and Jeewon Park, for a glorious weekend of piano trios joined by violinist and Artistic Director, Tessa Lark.  Tessa will be hosting a pre-concert talk one hour prior to each performance. Her talks begin at 4pm on Saturday and at 2pm on Sunday. Featured composers include Mendelssohn, Babajanian and Schubert. Musical Masterworks 33rd season runs from October 2023 – April 2024 at the First Congregational Church of Old Lyme at 4 Lyme Street.  To purchase tickets ($45 each), or student tickets ($5 each), visit Musical Masterworks at www.musicalmasterworks.org or email admin@musicalmasterworks.org.

BRANFORD, CT February 5, 2024 – Branford’s Legacy Theatre is honored to announce that the theatre was selected as a recipient of federal funding through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA). ARPA grants support local nonprofits in their recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic. Because the theatre serves both the Branford and Guilford communities (and the Shoreline at large), Legacy will be receiving ARPA funds from both towns and their foundations. The Branford Community Foundation and the Town of Branford have awarded $35,000 to the non-profit professional theatre company, and the Guilford Foundation and Guilford Board of Selectman have awarded $18,500. Legacy Theatre is incredibly grateful to First Selectman James Cosgrove and the RTM of the Town of Branford, and to First Selectman Matt Hoey and the Board of Selectman of the Town of Guilford. The theatre would also like to thank the Branford Community Foundation and the Guilford Foundation for managing a methodical and fair process throughout. The allocation of ARPA funding to nonprofits demonstrates the value and role charitable organizations play in the Branford and Guilford communities. “Legacy is proud to be a part of the roster of nonprofit groups serving the Shoreline,” said Legacy Theatre Managing Director, Jeff Provost. “The ARPA funds we received will help to fortify our theatre’s ability to provide unique services and programming in the live performance, arts, culture, and education fields that help strengthen the surrounding communities that we strive to serve. We truly appreciate this financial support.” The Legacy Theatre is a nonprofit, professional, regional theatre company located in the village of Stony Creek in Branford, CT at 128 Thimble Islands Road. Legacy strives to be a premiere arts house and to ensure ongoing seasons of uplifting, inspiring, and challenging theatre and theatre training for all. Seasons include Mainstage productions, a Sunday Broadway Concert Series, a Family Series for young audiences, special events, classes for all ages and abilities, and more. Subscriptions and tickets for Legacy’s 2024 Season are on sale now and can be purchased through the Box Office (203.315.1901) or Legacy’s website, LegacyTheatreCT.org. The Box Office is open Monday-Friday, 10am-3pm. For more information on upcoming productions, classes, community events, and sponsorship and partner opportunities, please email Kiersten@LegacyTheatreCT.org. @LegacyTheatreCT

A highlight of the Chester Arts & Literary Weekend is a night of storytelling from the Connecticut Storytelling Center. Taking the stage at the Chester Meeting House (4 Liberty Street, Chester) on Saturday, February 10 from 7:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. will be three renowned performers: Jennifer Munro, Liz Gruber and Joe Flood. Munro, the recipient of the Barbara Reed Award from the Connecticut Storytelling Center and the National Storytelling Network’s Circle of Excellence Award, is a master storyteller whose funny, original stories will touch your heart, lift your spirits, and make you laugh. Per her website, “ As a child growing up in a large working-class family in the English Midlands, Jennifer fell in love with the spoken word.  Every Sunday, a cast of rogues, ne’er-do-wells, raconteurs, and heroes gathered around the family’s old wooden table to tell stories, share secrets, and gossip.  Their tales are the inspiration for Jennifer’s extensive repertoire of stories.  Poignant, funny, and profoundly moving, they are carefully crafted narratives that resonate with the frailty and courage of the human spirit.” As a storyteller, Liz Gruber has embarked on an ongoing exploration of world story traditions. Gruber relishes sharing the fruits of her wanderings: an eclectic mix of folktales, myths or her own tales created from her experiences or whole cloth. A form of storytelling Gruber often adds to her performances is Kamishibai, a method popular in Japan after WWII through which “the storyteller uses a “theater” frame and pictures while telling the story.” Songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Joe Flood has traveled a long musical road.  He worked the streets of Paris with the Lost Wandering Blues and Jazz Band, wrote songs with Levon Helm of The Band, won a Gold Record for his work with Blues Traveler, and had on-stage and studio encounters with such giants of American music as Pinetop Perkins, Dr. John, Allen Toussaint, and John Sebastian.  He’s released five albums under his own name and been featured prominently on several albums produced by Eric "Roscoe" Ambel; written and recorded with stalwart roots rockers the Bottle Rockets and producer/artist Jono Manson; had his song sung on the Conan O’Brien Show by country singer Laura Cantrell and had the thrill of hearing legendary jazz great Doc Cheatham soloing on a recording of another. Tickets ($10) for this benefit performance can be purchased online at the Connecticut Storytelling Center or at the door. For more information about the Chester Arts & Literary Weekend, go to Visit Chester CT.

Three extraordinary authors and playwrights will be taking the stage at the Chester Meeting House on Sunday, February 11, at 5 p.m. when Breakwater Books presents a series of one-act plays in conjunction with Chester Arts & Literary Weekend. Who the audience will meet? Laura Thoma is a trauma-informed, internationally published playwright, award-winning short film screenwriter, theatremaker, and storyteller originally from Tidewater, Virginia. Laura will read an excerpt from her novel in progress, Grounded: A Story of Flight. Her personal essays have been featured on blogs, podcasts, and in magazines. Laura has developed her theatrical work with many organizations, including GreenStage Guilford Live Arts Festival, Cape May Stage, Drama Works Theatre, Pawling Theatre Exchange (Now CTX), Legacy Theatre, Desert Playwrights, and The Bechdel Group. She is an alumn of the National Playwrights Symposium and the Kennedy Center Playwriting Intensive. Laura co-founded Shoreline Playwrights, a partnership that develops new work. She is currently seeking regional productions for her play Magpie. Laura lives on the Shoreline with her bookish wife, Chris, and their dog, Buddy Fitzwilliam. Julie Fitzpatrick will be performing a segment of her solo show 77 U-Turn, which was published by Next Stage Press. Julie is an actress, writer, director, and teacher with Legacy Theatre. Julie teaches Acting for Adults and Creating Your Own Solo Show and co-leads Wheel Life Theatre Troupe with Keely Baisden-Knudsen. Julie is directing High School Musical Jr. at Our Lady of Mercy Prep performing the first weekend in March and her acting credits run the gamut from Off-Broadway to regional theater. Julie's Film/TV work includes Law & Order and The OA. Julie is a member of the Guilford Poets’ Guild, The Playwrights Circle and Ensemble Studio Theatre in NYC. Her book Church on the Screen: A Sunday Series of Pandemic Poetry is available at the wonderful Breakwater Books in Guilford. More info can be found at juliefitzpatrick.com. Special thanks to her loves: her husband, Pete, and her sons, Fitz and Gracen. When Pat Lore was 23, she took her only business suit, hung it in her Toyota Corolla, and headed west for 1337 miles for a job interview as a TV reporter.  She had a broken gas gauge, no working radio, and a paper map to guide her on her cross-country journey From North Carolina to Wichita Falls, Texas. The trip taught Pat two very big lessons: Never move to a place with more tumbleweeds than people and if you ever need a quick blow dry, the McDonald's bathroom has killer dryers. Pat is an author and the owner of Headline Productions, a video production agency in Guilford, CT.  She’s currently undergoing another journey through life as a single empty nester, an experience which has brought with it lots of humor. The event is free. For more information about the Chester Arts & Literary Weekend, go to Visit Chester CT.

Photo courtesy of Joseph Getter “BEING: An Immersive Exhibit”, created by ARTFARM and Oddfellows Playhouse, will be presented for one day only at Oddfellows Playhouse in Middletown. The event will be presented in 20 minute sessions at 5 pm, 5:30 pm and 6 pm on February 18. A handful of intergenerational artists populate this experience: ARTFARM ensemble members, members of Oddfellows’ Teen Repertory Company, a Wesleyan University student, Cosmic Hue (Craig Norton and Kalidasa Joseph Getter) and artist Denise Smith work together in this simple exploration of what it is to ‘BE”… You are invited into the Black Box to wander through a live musical sound-scape with physical theater artists and to explore the natural world of art - indoors - as a silent short film journeys with several unique and similar, whole and simple beings in neutral masks (hand crafted by master Venetian mask maker, Adriano Bertolini) moving from Isolation to Connection as they come into BEING through Awakening to Connection to Nature, to the s(S)elf and ultimately to Community. A journey of individuation and connection to one's Essential Being. Come immerse. Be simple. Be with us. Maybe even be surprised. “BEING: An Immersive Exhibit” will be held in the Black Box Theater at Oddfellows Playhouse, 128 Washington St, Middletown, CT on Sunday, February 18. Each twenty minute time slot is limited to 20 audience members, so it is highly recommended that you reserve your place for one of the slots. Visits are scheduled for 5 pm, 5:30 pm and 6 pm. Go to https://docs.google.com/.../1FAIpQLSfGXHQ.../viewform to reserve your journey into BEING for one of the three time slots. For more information, contact ARTFARM at info@art-farm.org, or go to www.art-farm.org or www.oddfellows.org.

Guilford, CT –  Guilford Art Center invites the community to a free art-making event on Friday, February 23, 5:00-7:00pm, to celebrate the current gallery exhibition of art quilts, Flora and Fauna by the Studio Art Quilt Associates. This community event, called The Patchwork Project, encourages community members to create alongside each other by decorating their own poster-board squares in open studio creation stations. The project will culminate in each square being connected to the next, resulting in a community “quilt” that represents how each of our stories and lives are intertwined. This project honors the role that textile and fiber artmaking has held throughout history and its role in building community, storytelling and preserving traditions. The gallery and shop will have extended hours of 10:00am-7:00pm on Friday, Feb 23. Participants are encouraged to visit the gallery exhibit for inspiration, which will be open throughout evening during the event. Guilford Art Center will continue to offer this activity for gallery visitors throughout the weekend on Saturday, February 24 from 10:00am-4:00pm and Sunday, February 25 from 12:00-4:00pm. There will be a table set-up in the gallery entrance for those who want to create a square. This event is free and open to the community. All ages are welcome. For more information, contact Guilford Art Center at info@guilfordartcenter.org or call (203) 453-5947.

On Saturday, February 10, at 4 p.m. Chester resident Howard Fishman will be speaking about his book "To Anyone Who Ever Asks: The Life, Music, and Mystery of Connie Converse" at the Spring Street Studio & Gallery (1 Spring Street, Chester, CT). Moderating the event will be Dr. Michele K. Troy, professor of English/director of the President's College for the University of Hartford. Per a press release from Fishman's publisher (Dutton, see attached), "When musician and New Yorker contributor Howard Fishman first heard Connie Converse’s amateur recordings from the early 1950s by chance at a party, he was convinced she could not be real. Her songs were too good not to know, and too anachronistic to make sense. Converse seemed to bridge the gap between traditional Americana (country, blues, folk, jazz, and gospel), the Great American Songbook, classical art song, and the singer-songwriter movement spurred by Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell--but she was doing it a decade before they'd arrive. Mesmerized by her genius, the connection was instant: Fishman needed to know everything there was to know about this enigmatic artist. But there was hardly any public information available. The bizarre legend about Connie Converse that had become the prevailing narrative among those who had also discovered her music was that in 1974, at the age of 50, she simply drove off one day and was never heard from again. Could this have been true? Who was Connie Converse, really? Determined to put together the missing pieces of her life and art, Fishman set out to write the Connie Converse story. A dozen years of research, travel to the places she lived, immersion into the voluminous effects she left behind, and hundreds of interviews later (including many with her friends and family members), he gives readers the compelling result of his first-ever book.

Enjoy the Silence is a tale of a group of contestants on a reality TV show who are challenged to take a vow of silence. The contestant who can outlast the competition and stay silent the longest wins a luxury trip to space! Directed by Allison McDermott, Enjoy the Silence runs February 29th - March 2nd at Oddfellows Playhouse in Middletown. Performances are at 7 pm on February 29th, March 1st and 2nd, and there is also a 2 pm matinee performance on Saturday, March 2nd. Tickets are $18 for adults and $10 for kids and students. The performance on Thursday, February 29th is a “pay-what-you-can” Preview. Enjoy the Silence includes acrobatics, juggling, contortion, stilt walking, unicycling and more! Circophony Teen Circus is a collaboration between Oddfellows Playhouse Youth Theater and the Middletown-based theater company ARTFARM.  This year’s show includes a cast of 15 trained performers ages 13 to 20. McDermott has created an original circus-theater piece annually for the past 7 years and it is a highlight of winter in Middletown. This winter’s show features acrobatics and contortion choreography by Naja Muller, poi choreography by Grey Simon, and equilibristics and capoeira choreography by Joel Melendez. Scenic design is by Dan Schmidt, costume design by Marion Imbruglio, lighting design by Emma Graydon, sound design by Rowan Trowbridge-Wheeler, and properties design by Patience Armstrong. Technical direction by Myke Halpin. Oddfellows Playhouse is located at 128 Washington Street in Middletown. Tickets for Enjoy the Silence are $18 for adults and $10 for students and may be purchased at www.oddfellows.org or by emailing info@oddfellows.org or calling (860) 347-6143. Circophony’s Enjoy the Silence  is made possible with generous support from the Connecticut Office of the Arts/DECD; Middletown Commission on the Arts; City of Middletown Health Department; American Savings Foundation; George A. & Grace L. Long Foundation; The Fund for Greater Hartford; State of Connecticut Judicial Branch (Youth Violence Prevention); Evan Boyd Knoll Memorial Fund; Community Foundation of Middlesex County; Middletown Youth Services Bureau; Thomas J. Atkins Memorial Trust Fund; Middlesex United Way; and many generous individual donors.

As artist enclaves in Connecticut go, the village of Chester is amongst the top of the list. To celebrate that, the town is hosting a Chester Arts & Literary Weekend from February 9-11 at myriad shops and venues. On tap: readings/talks, Meet the Artists, demonstrations, workshops, jam sessions and live evening performances. Lovers of children’s literature will want to check into Chester Public Library, where Tassy Walden Award winners, including Doe Boyle, Leslie Connor, Jeanne Ferruolo Zulik, Nancy Tandon, Kimberly Behre Kenna, Frank Dormer, and more, will be reading and sharing insight into their writing worlds. Adult lit fans can take in talks from authors including Howard Fishman, author of “To Anyone Who Ever Asks: The Life, Music, and Mystery of Connie Converse,” flash fiction fave Paul Beckman, who’ll be talking about his new novel “Becoming Mirsky,” environmentalist Erica Cirino sharing her journey that led to “Thicker Than Water.” Little House Brewing Company will be featuring local photographer Brenda Dunn and her series titled Veiled Void, a pop-up of local Chester artist Aidan Neely and Deep River Woodworker Nick Shkutzko of Just Wood Crafting, and New England artist and author Em Sauter of “Pints & Panels” will be signing her books “Beer is for Everyone! (of Drinking Age)” and “Hooray for Craft Beer!” Meeting artists and learning about their process (or watching it underway) will be a mainstay of the weekend. On Saturday and Sunday at noon, Rob Walker of Atmosphere Glass will perform glass-blowing demonstrations. Just down the street, BlackKat Leather will have demonstrations throughout the weekend, as will Dina Varano of Dina Varano Gallery, who will be showcasing her timely Amore jewelry collection and creating unique cards to accompany each item. On Sunday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., The Lori Warner Gallery will feature a Meet the Artists event with Mandy Carroll, Ann Lightfoot and Florence Penault on board to chat with guests. Just across the street, The Wayfinder Society will highlight a 3D printing art demonstration, host a Meet and Greet with artist Brigid Minter, along with author readings/panels. And Leif Nilsson of Spring Street Studio and Gallery will share stories about his works of art over the weekend. On Sunday, Leif will bring his love of music into the mix when the band Arrowhead invites folk to listen to them play on Sunday between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. A double-dose of Moya Aiken is happening with Congregation Beth Shalom Rodfe Zedek (CBSRZ) welcoming Chester Arts & Literary Weekenders into her exhibition on February 9 between 10 and 3 (please call in advance, (860) 526-8920). Then, on Sunday at 3:30 p.m., Chester Gallery hosts Aiken as she shares her new memoir and does signings. To take in while there—art from both Aiken and Richard Ziemann, whose exhibition at New Britain Art Museum will be underway. Ready to work on an art project of your own? Chester Historical Society (CHS) has you covered with both inspiration and a challenge. As CHS hastens in its 11th Annual Creative Challenge, it will be hosting a one-time-only display of Creative Challenges Past/Future at the Chester Museum at The Mill (9 Main Street, 860-558-4701), Saturday & Sunday, 11 am – 3 pm. Artifacts used in these challenges often came from early Chester manufacturers, such as Brooks and Bates, or were found materials from local properties. This year’s “Watch Out!” challenge item: antique pocket watch glasses, circa 1880s. Dive in and join this year’s challenge! But we’re just getting started. There’s much afoot on the evenings of Chester Arts & Literary Weekend… Evenings at Chester Meeting House (4 Liberty Street) Acoustic Jam Session, Friday, starting at 6 p.m. Musicians are invited to join in this jam session. Audience members are encouraged to lend a voice, clap their hands, and dance their hearts out! Tapville will have a bar onsite. Connecticut Storytelling Center Presents Music & Storytelling, Saturday at 7:30 p.m. Storytellers Jennifer Munro and Liz Gruber, along with songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Joe Flood, will be taking the stage during this 90-minute benefit for the Connecticut Storytelling Center. Also on tap—music! And beer. Tapville will have a bar onsite. $10 per ticket, pre-purchase at connstorycenter.org/ or at the door the night of the performance. Breakwater Books Presents a Series of One-Act Plays, Sunday at 5 p.m. Connecticut authors/playwrights Laura Thoma, Pat Lore and Julie Fitzpatrick present their works onstage via one-act plays hosted by Breakwater Books. Meet the authors and grab their books post-show! All events are free to the public, with the exception of the Connecticut Storytellers Center’s Saturday night show. Additional parking can be found at these locations. Stay tuned to schedule updates via Visit Chester’s website.