Dartmouth Cultural Center reopens with exhibit from Our Sisters’ School

Mar 10, 2022

After a two-month hiatus, the Dartmouth Cultural Center is open again and already has a new art exhibit from the students of Our Sisters’ School adorning its walls.

All 65 students from the New Bedford all-girls private middle school submitted at least one piece to the exhibit, which opened on Friday evening, March 4.

Tobey Eugenio, the creativity director at Our Sisters’ School, said that the students were in charge of every step of the process, from selecting which pieces to submit, to matting them and making note cards for them, and even pricing them to sell.

Eugenio said the project taught the students the importance of entrepreneurship in art and showed them they “deserve a seat at the table” while also providing a fundraising opportunity for the cultural center, which gets a commission of each sale.

“We believe in empowering art of all types,” Eugenio said. “The goal is to make sure every student has the ability to embrace their creativity.”

The artworks displayed at the exhibit showed the diversity of mediums the students had the opportunity to experiment with.

One sixth grade student who attended the exhibit’s opening, Aviah Mendes, said she was inspired to teach herself wire wrapping after finding the materials one day.

“[The teacher] had this big box of wires and I said ‘I want to make something with this,’” she recalled. “I had a lot of difficulties but I’m really proud of the final product.”

Another sixth grader, Lilly Pires-Avelino, who said art is one of her favorite things to do, submitted two watercolor pieces she made using different techniques.

For one piece, she explained how she used tape to create lines of blank space, then painted the colors she wanted for each space before adding salt to texture them.

In another, she blended mediums by adding a pen-and-ink design over a watercolor background.

Avelino said she priced the second piece at $50 because it took a long time and used two different mediums.

Other students chose to submit pieces that they made as part of class projects.

Seventh-grader Aden Ackah said she painted her picture of a breaching bowhead whale as part of a project on Inuit whaling.

“It’s the type of whale that Native Americans hunted,” she said.
Eugenio said that the school had held a similar exhibit last year, but had had to do it virtually because of Covid restrictions. This year she said she was excited to be able to do it in person.

Pauline Santos, the president of the cultural center’s board of directors, agreed.

“To have student art here is very exciting,” she said.