Whether favorited, opened, ignored or moved straight to trash, everyone with a Brookline school account has probably received a series of emails regarding the Brookline Exhibition. However, few know that the founders of this successful non-profit organization aren’t adults –instead, seniors Sophia Heinrich and Isabel Oldham put in hours of work weekly to create an art magazine flipped by hundreds across Brookline.
The Brookline Exhibition Magazine is a collection of multi-media art pieces of Brookline students from grades K-12, published in paper and online once a year. Although the magazine mostly showcases art, it is also, in part, a competition; students can vote on their favorite art piece, and then those piece’s creators receive a 100 dollar prize. Today, the magazine strives to represent as many artists in the Brookline community as possible.
Created in 2023 by Heinrich and Oldham, the idea started as a college essay writing help magazine. After some development and changes, however, the magazine evolved to include over 100 submissions of art forms including poetry, photography, painting and more. Heinrich described the process of creating the magazine as challenging and time-consuming, with multiple iterations and idea changes.
“It started off with a lot of emailing and a lot of online research. We tried to get as much information as possible,” Heinrich said. “We reached out to all of these different places, and a lot of the emails that we sent were ghosted. That’s just part of doing something like this, you’re gonna be ghosted.”
Having both been artists for most of their lives, but missing a platform to share their art, Oldham said they wanted to create a space highlighting talents in Brookline and celebrating them.
“We always wanted this platform for us, and we both have younger siblings, so we really wanted to create this space where people like us could have been able to share our art,” Oldham said.
Heinrich said that she thought of the idea for the magazine after observing the underrepresentation of the art community at the high school when compared to other activities like sports or music.
“We just saw something that wasn’t there and we wanted to bring it, and make it something fun, something that really inspires kids. A lot of things are so competitive and so ‘for a purpose’ and so ‘for college.’ Art doesn’t really help a lot of people in that; it’s usually just a passion,” Heinrich said. “So we want to encourage people to pursue things that make them happy and express themselves because I don’t think that’s valued enough in Brookline.”
To help them in the process, Heinrich and Oldham approached Arts curriculum coordinator Donna Sartanowicz. From helping them reach out to the elementary schools to advising the co-founders, Sartanowicz played a role in the development of the magazine.
Sartanowicz said, while the co-founders identified challenges early on, working with the K-8 art teachers helped the magazine to succeed.
“If anyone can set this project up for future success, it is [Heinrich] and [Oldham] – they are passionate and determined. The Brookline Exhibition gives students across the district an opportunity to showcase their artwork and writing in a professional format that is widely distributed and celebrated within the larger Brookline community,” Sartanowicz said in an email to The Cypress.
While the magazine appeals to many different age groups, according to Oldham, the impact on students is universal.
“There’s still that shared thing of, ‘your work is published.’ Someone appreciated your artwork. A kindergartener is gonna be just as excited seeing their work in a fancy magazine as a 12th grader would,” Oldham said. “It’s that shared like connection of, ‘we’re all in this shared space.’”
Sophomore Evelyn Carver submitted a couple of sketches in 2023, and saw her work published in the magazine. She said she was very happy to see her work featured and will most likely submit again in the future.
“It’s been really helpful in giving me confidence as an artist. I haven’t really done any publishing [of] my art before, so that was my first time doing that, which was cool,” Carver said. “It was also cool to see it with other people’s art in my school and see what other people are doing.”
While the maintenance and organization of the magazine is time-consuming and difficult, according to Oldham, both co-founders agreed they grew from the experience and are proud of their work. Heinrich stressed the importance of trying something new and unknown.
“It gives me a lot more confidence to go into something that I’ve never done before. We want to pass that on to the next generation, the confidence to pursue something that you don’t know anything about,” Heinrich said. “No one really knows anything until you do it.”
