“We will curate artwork that evokes the miracle of the natural world through humanity‘s distilled symbolic language,”

Cherokee Street Gallery will be hosting exhibitions that explore the intersection of nature and iconography. “We will curate artwork that evokes the miracle of the natural world through humanity‘s distilled symbolic language,” says gallery founder and artist Benjamin Lowder.

“The artwork we curate will be diverse, but it is Cherokee Street Gallery's intent to keep humanity's use of symbols to communicate our relationship with nature as a uniting thread throughout our programing.” 

Cherokee Street Gallery takes it's name from it's location and Cherokee Street takes it's name from the lost Cherokee Cave network that still exists beneath the street's pavement. Although access to the cave has been lost, the mystery and power associated with this fabled system of caverns still defines the area through the legends of native americans who revered it as a sacred place, to the breweries it brought to St. Louis in the 1800's who used the caves for refrigeration. The subterranean geology of this cave network, known to geologists as a "karst region," has defined the history and current character of St. Louis. This relationship between nature, in the form of these caves and their influence on the mythic identity of a city is a perfect example of the intersection between nature and symbols that we hope to explore.