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The following is how the paper quilt came to be.


Staten Island Dance and Arts Center SIDAC is a community-style creative space that offers students of all ages opportunities to develop their dance, art and musical theater skills. We also offer classes in cooking and fashion design and sewing. One of SIDAC's yearly goals is to increase outreach
and connection to the community. Creating the quilt with the members of the South Shore Artist Group was an awesome collaborative opportunity for our visual art students to reach the community and give their artwork so others may enjoy. Each student was proud to participate and contribute their part to the whole. SIDAC is owned and operated by Eileen Simoniello and Michele Ajello, two mothers and artists from SI following their passion through their love of the arts and children's creativity.


South Shore Artists Group is a non profit organization in existence since 1946. This original artist group came together to paint every Tuesday and was hosted at the time in Richmond Hospital. In keeping with the tradition and during this our 50th anniversary on the grounds of the Conference House Park our exhibits we decided to come together in collaboration with the children of SIDAC to celebrate the arts and create a beautiful paper quilt.


The original idea was thought out by Susan Ippolito and Helen Bilotti, who wanted to create original art on actual tile. It would not have been practical and extremely inconvenient to hang actual tiles and transport the art to various locations, after much brainstorming, in 2017 the paper quilt was born.


The quilt represents dream fulfillments and wishes.
The children at SIDAC worked diligently in creating each individual paper tile to share their idea with other children.
Each tile represents the individual artist and their talent. Each is unique and descriptive of their craft.
We have our dancers, musicians, painters, designers, singers, chefs, writers, ultimate creators and visionaries. The children are the future, their dreams each and everyone matters.
We celebrate the arts because we strongly feel that through the arts we can build our own worlds, as artists we dedicate our entire life to creating beauty, we can heal our wounds, art gives us confidence and builds healthy self esteem and through it our hopes and dreams come true.


We are most proud of our children and feel honored to present it to our communities.

www.southshoreartistsgroup.com