To promote its new high school art exhibition, New Bedford’s Gallery X requested poster designs from each high school — New Bedford, Dartmouth and Fairhaven.

But once the poster designs came in, Gallery X’s Executive Director Zachary White had a different problem.

“I was like, ‘Ok, I’m not picking from these,” White said. “For Dartmouth [High School], I think, I ended up hanging like five different ones.”

The posters now hang among the 200 or so personal and scholastic artworks featured in Gallery X’s High School Select Redux show, on display until Nov. 26. The show, which was made possible by an “Art is Everywhere!” grant from New Bedford Creative, restarts a previous annual tradition at Gallery X that was discontinued in 2011. 

When White took over as executive director in 2020, he wanted to reinstate the show, but started small in 2021 and 2022 with only New Bedford High School. 

This year, along with Fairhaven High School, the work of Dartmouth High School art students and teachers was added to the mix, showing off not just the depth of talent at the school, but the breadth of its class offerings, from drawing, to digital photography, to darkroom photography to jewelry design to ceramics. The only discipline not featured was fashion design, but lead teacher Christine McFee said she hopes to feature fashion students at the next show. 

“We are very very lucky that we have the support to have a range of courses like that,” McFee said.

Teachers helped students choose which pieces to feature, but the decision ultimately fell to the students themselves. 

“I want to support them in what they want to share in the world,” McFee said. “I think it's really good for them to have their work on display somewhere other than our own art show that they know their art is going into.”

In addition to work done at the school for assignments, McFee opened submissions up to independent projects. 

“I hope [visitors] see how much talent we have in our area, and how much the arts are so important,” McFee said. “I hope they see that there’s a lot of talent and a lot of passionate young people who have a voice they want to express with their art.”

Like most of Gallery X’s shows, no jurying process took place, meaning the gallery does not need to approve works for exhibition. But the quality of work, White said, is on par with any of Gallery X’s exhibitions. 

“You could put this work into any of our shows and you wouldn’t pick it out as a high school student’s work,” White said. 

White chalks the quality up to the investment that local schools put into student art programs.

“I went to New Bedford High,” White said. “The work is a lot more put together than it was when I was there and [from] what people would expect.”

For the most impressive work, the gallery will hand out free memberships to students from each school. Memberships allow students to submit work to future art shows at the gallery, where they could potentially sell their work, too. 

Dartmouth High School junior Mike Burke is already a member at Gallery X, and has been submitting his work to show for the past year. He recently sold one of his pieces. 

Though Burke’s ceramic work was in the basement, he appreciated that Dartmouth was given a prime location at the front of the gallery’s top floor. 

“I know my classmates worked really hard on their pieces and their stuff is on the wall right near the entrance, so that’s really cool,” Burke said.

Teachers shared their own works alongside students’ pieces. Ceramics and digital photography teacher Heather Cronin, for instance, shared her paintings “yellow” and “i,” as well as her digital photography series titled “Transformation.”

“I call myself a ‘scainter’: sculpture, ceramics and painting,” Cronin said. 

McFee shared her series of bird paintings with geometric designs, which she painted following along with her own lesson plans. 

“I did a miniseries trying to imagine that I am the student and this is what I have to create,” McFee said. 

Gallery X is open Wednesday to Friday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. The exhibition is featured on the gallery’s main floor and in the basement. 

“Art is a way to share and I think when they see their pieces here, they’ll be proud,” Cronin said. “They should be proud.”