Ethical Society of St. Louis' Art Shows

Each year the Art Committee produces six to seven exhibits featuring various local artists in the Society gallery. Additionally they host a yearly "Meet The Artist" lecture where noted local artists show and discuss their work. Gallery hours are 9:30am - 3pm, Monday through Friday, and 10am - 1pm on Sundays.

Current show

John Sarra: wash drawings

This exhibition features twenty recent works on paper by John Sarra. Although some have been reworked with diverse media, each piece began as a wash drawing executed with Chinese ink or organic pigments. These works emerge from John’s interest in Chinese calligraphy, Chinese garden design, and the tradition of collecting gong shi, often translated as “scholars’ rocks” or “gazing stones.” In contrast to larger stones which are displayed outdoors, these gazing stones are often mounted on pedestals or submerged in pools of water as objects of contemplation. The stones are prized both for representational content (miniature mountain ranges, for example) and for their more abstract aesthetics (energy of form). These wash drawings use the pitted forms of Tai Hu stones (limestone from Lake Tai, a popular source for early collectors) as a means for introducing a broader conversation regarding the tangibility and intangibility of our imagination, and the subtle interplay between the creative act, the created object, and our experience of that object. In many of the works, the unpainted areas exist as tangible, dimensional descriptions of stones while maintaining the ability to flatten into the more abstract, infinite spaces akin to reflections in pools of water.

John Sarra was born in Las Vegas, Nevada in 1972. He received his BA (Studio Art) from the College of Charleston in 1994, and went on to earn his MFA (Painting) from Washington University in 1997. He lives and works in St. Louis with his wife Christine and their 9-month old daughter, Florence. John is represented by Gottheiner, Ltd. Contemporary Art in St. Louis (www.gottheiner.com), and by Space B Gallery in New York (www.spaceb.com). He currently holds the position of Senior Lecturer in the Painting Department at Washington University.

Previous shows

Jeff Sippel

Jeff Sippel is a printmaker whose work has been featured in over 200 group exhibitions through the course of a 25-year career. His work is represented in public collections on three continents, including the Bibliotheque Nationale de France in Paris, Smithsonian National Museum of American Art in Washington, DC, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City and the University of Capetown, South Africa. In this exhibition entitled �Figures Lost and Found,� Sippel presents recent prints, works on paper and paintings. His recent work ranges in subject matter incorporating the figure to pieces that are expressionistic, intuitive and abstract.

Lorraine Gergeceff-Cooper

Artist Lorraine Gergeceff-Cooper will exhibit her oil and watercolor paintings at the Ethical Society in September. Gergeceff-Cooper is widely acclaimed and presents vivid expressive images in a bold kaleidoscope of color. She is the winner of a 2004 St. Louis Watercolor Society Achievement Award.

She has exhibited widely in the United States and in France, Greece and Austria. Locally, the St. Louis Art Museum, the Missouri Historical Society, Fontbonne University, and St. Louis University have displayed her paintings.

A graduate of Southern Illinois University, she earned an MFA from Instituto Allende in Mexico. She received further training at the University of Guanajuato and the Aegean School of Fine Arts and other institutions in Greece in addition to her graduate study in Dordogne, Florence and Salzburg.