From the Director
(back to Gallery)
As owner and director of the Arteco Gallery 
in Cumberland Maryland, I welcome you to explore this website to learn who we are and what we do.
My name is Jerri Dell and I am a relative newcomer to the mountains of Western Maryland. For thirty years I made my career in international development, managing training programs for low-income craftspeople in Africa, Asia and Latin America- people whose families' survival depend on their ability to sell their art. This was stressful work, and though I loved it, after three decades I chose to hand it off to a new generation of people eager to change the world.
In no time, my artist husband and I had left Washington, D.C. and were living in a three-story brick building in Cumberland's historic downtown. Within weeks of our arrival, we had met at least a dozen artists who were also making mountain Maryland their home: both well-established mid-career artists and re-emerging artists who left long careers elsewhere to make art full-time.
In October 2005, I opened the Arteco Gallery on the first floor of our building as an exhibition gallery that features the work of fine artists and craftspeople from as close as Cumberland's South End and as far away as Peru, Senegal and Bhutan. The Arteco Gallery has helped me bridge the work I did for so long in other countries and the life I've chosen here in my own. It allows me to offer my new community a glimpse of global arts and culture, on the one hand; and to the work of extremely talented but not "big city" artists to the attention of art collectors and others who might never have known them.
On this website you will learn about Arteco artists, exhibitions, events and artwork available for sale. I hope what you learn here will inspire you to visit our part of the world; hike and bike our mountain trails, ride our steam train, tour our historic homes, and be dazzled by the lights of our steeples at night. But most of all, please come to enjoy the art!
