Couch Conversations 1: Sin City

Art Saint Louis Launches Art Collecting Series and Inaugural Panel Connecting Visual Art and Sin

(Left to right): Helen De Cruz. Photo courtesy of Helen De Cruz; Aaron McMullin. Image credit Natcha Wongchonglaw.

On Saturday, February 10th from 3:30-5 p.m., Art Saint Louis (ASL) invites St. Louis to cozy up with a coffee and sinfully comforting baked goods alongside conversation with local artist and activist Aaron McMullin and Professor Helen DeCruz, Danforth Chair in the Humanities at Saint Louis University for Art Saint Louis' first Couch Conversations. The intention of this series is to create an access point and community around collecting local art.

This limited-ticket event series is designed to remain intimate with no more than 20 guests gathered at Art Saint Louis near the panelists as if in a living room or similar space. A limited menu of specialty coffee drinks and sinfully comforting baked goods will be offered. This event is designed to engage those already deeply connected in the visual art community in St. Louis, but with a particular focus and outreach to welcome those interested in dipping their toes in the often intimidating but vital pool of art collecting.

Sin has been a subject for artistic exploration over the centuries across the world. Sin in a particularly Western religious context, describes an immoral act against divine law. In a secular world, it means a serious offense or neglect. Sin is as universal as it is personal, as is both making and collecting art.

“This series marks ASL’s first step in a new conversation with the St. Louis community, designed to nurture and develop a deeper relationship with collecting original, ideally local art and the deeply generative implications, as well as meeting other collectors or artists and strengthening our community around collecting,” states Francesca Passanise, Executive Director for Art Saint Louis.

“Of course, collecting and making art are not sinful, nor are they just for the elite. By aligning this first event with this provocative subject matter, however, of depicting or challenging sin and leveraging this concept in visual art from a wide spectrum of perspectives, as the exhibiting artists and McMullin does, we are providing an approachable entry point to why making and collecting art are universal human needs, all through connecting with St. Louis-based artists, experts, and individuals as intrigued as you.”

Gallery view: Sin City exhibit currently on view at Art Saint Louis. Image credit Robin Hirsch-Steinhoff.

Couch Conversations is presented in conjunction with ASL’s first in-gallery exhibit of 2024, Sin City, featuring more than 50 artworks that examine and challenge the concept of the seven deadly sins: pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and sloth. Juried by St. Louis-based artists and educators Norleen Nosri and Brian Lathan, this show highlights works by 32 regional artists and includes ceramics, collage, digital art, drawing, glass, mixed media, painting, photography, sculpture, and textiles. Sin City remains on view through February 14 and the Art Saint Louis Gallery is free and open to the public 6 days a week: Monday-Friday 8 a.m.-4 p.m. and Saturday 9 a.m.-3 p.m.

Presented concurrently with Sin City is our Virtual Gallery Exhibition, Virtue. This new show is presented exclusively online on the ASL website (January 6-February 14, 2024) and features works by 28 St. Louis area artists. The 39 artworks presented consider the human virtues of wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence.

RESERVE YOUR SEAT TODAY
Tickets for Couch Conversations are $10 and your ticket includes a complimentary crafted coffee beverage from ASL’s Catalyst Coffee Bar and a sinfully decadent baked good. This event is held at Art Saint Louis and seating is limited, so please register here.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Professor Helen DeCruz is Danforth Chair in the Humanities at Saint Louis University. Her work examines why and how humans engage in pursuits that seem remote from the immediate concerns of survival and reproduction, including theology and art. She is author of Wonderstruck: How Awe and Wonder Shape the Way We Think (Princeton University Press, in press), Religious Disagreement (Cambridge University, 2019), and she has edited and illustrated Philosophy Illustrated: Forty-Two Thought Experiments to Broaden Your Mind (Oxford University Press, 2022). In addition to her PhD in philosophy (2011, University of Groningen), she holds a PhD in archaeology and art sciences (2007, Free University of Brussels).

Aaron McMullin is a conceptually-driven multimedia artist and activist working primarily in textiles and photography. She received her Bachelor of Arts from Sarah Lawrence College (2009) and MFA in Textiles at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (2024). Over the last decade, Aaron has worked as a community arts organizer and educator. She has held the title of Teaching Artist, AmeriCorps VISTA, and Co-Facilitator for an anti-racist book club. In 2011, Aaron received a Fulbright-Nehru Research Grant and a Critical Language Enhancement Award to study cotton farming in India. While conducting research in India, she served as a contributing editor for the book, Invisible Hands: Human Rights and the Global Economy, later published in 2014. In 2015 Aaron received an Artist Support Grant from the Regional Arts Commission and returned to India to work with cotton farmers on a collaborative portrait series, Faceless Farmers. In 2020 she received a Competitive Graduate Award from SIUE. In both 2021 and 2022, her artwork won awards in photography and textiles at the annual juried student exhibition at SIUE. Her MFA Thesis Exhibition Legacies of (in)humanity and Legacy Quilt community art project were displayed at Wildfruit Projects in December 2023, including works that examine race and white supremacy by confronting the issues and highlighting those who fought against injustices. Aaron is dedicated to nurturing collaboration, creativity, compassion, and connection through the exploration of art and community.


ABOUT ART SAINT LOUIS
Art Saint Louis (ASL) was created by artists to change the lives of artists living and working in St. Louis, Missouri and the surrounding 200-mile radius around the City of St. Louis. A nonprofit community art organization and gallery dedicated to enriching lives through the creative activity of our region’s contemporary visual artists, ASL connects and inspires our community, and multiplies the economic and cultural vitality of our region through exhibition, education, and exchange.

2024 marks the 40th anniversary year for our namesake exhibition, Art St. Louis, the Exhibition. We continue to cultivate an appreciation for the role that visual art and artists play in our community. We believe that ART has the capacity to relay something of transcendent meaning to people from all walks of life; that through aesthetic exploration and illumination of the human experience, ARTISTS play an important role in provoking the social and spiritual consciousness of our community; and that, by nurturing the development of art, OUR COMMUNITY is more apt to appreciate subtlety, respect individuality and celebrate diversity.

We fulfill our mission by creating and presenting original exhibitions, educational programming and support services aimed at cultivating and championing the art of our region and the impact of the artists creating in our region. Our efforts connect and benefit artists and the audiences their work impacts by helping artists achieve professional success while deepening our community’s understanding and enjoyment of contemporary visual art.

Art Saint Louis presents exhibitions year-round, also as the home of Catalyst Coffee Bar in our gallery/café hybrid in the historic Park Pacific building at 1223 Pine Street in the heart of downtown St. Louis. Every exhibit is free and open to the public. Art Saint Louis Juried Exhibitions showcase new works by visual artists aged 18 and older residing within a 200-mile radius of St. Louis. Additionally, Art Saint Louis produces a variety of educational and outreach programs, including exhibits in locations around the city, manages Art Rental and Purchasing programs, produces unique artistic programming, and offers artist portfolio reviews and counseling.

Through all of our efforts, we are proud to join in establishing a national identity for St. Louis as place where fine art is not only celebrated but also where it is made.