The church was quiet as I entered. The mid-afternoon sun was glowing through the tall stained-glass windows and bathing the raised altar in warm light. Past the rows of pews, at the back of the room, a set of dark wooden doors opened to a well-lit rectangular room. The high, arching roof of the nave flattened into a low ceiling, and the plush red carpeting stood out against the rich brown wood of the double doors on each side of the room. From Jan. 16 until April 12, 16 works of art — part of a new exhibition called “Spirit of the Trees” — occupy its white walls. 

The unique location of the Red Gate Gallery — situated in the foyer of the Wydown United Church, which lies against the back edge of the South 40 — is one of the many novel features of the gallery. Red Gate opened in 2023, co-founded by mother-daughter duo Adrienne Outlaw and Elena Piston, alongside fellow artist Sarah Moon, who got her MFA from WashU’s Sam Fox School in 2024. Outlaw is a member of the Wydown United Church and explained that the church gave “carte blanche to do whatever we wanted” with the space. Outlaw also sees the space itself — quite different from the typical white-box gallery — as another perk of the gallery. 

“It’s a really warm, inviting space that you enter into the church before you go into the sanctuary,” she said. “I’ve noticed people feel much more comfortable in that space than a white box gallery.”

Outlaw added that situating the gallery within a church adds an additional dimension to the viewing experience. 

“It really allows people to enter a religious building without that sort of overarching religious experience … you can have that feeling of sacredness.” 

Outlaw believes the gallery is not confined by its location, but elevated by the contrast between the art and the church’s sanctum.  

“Being able to show this artwork that sometimes addresses such critical issues, and to have people understand that it’s in a church and the church is okay with it … is a real opportunity for people to see that not all religious institutions are close-minded,” she said.

According to Outlaw, the very first show at Red Gate Gallery was highly critical of religion, among other issues. “I just remember seeing people approach that piece, and be very open-minded about what its content was,” she said.

The “Spirit of the Trees” exhibition, curated by artist Mel Watkin, was created in response to the EF3 tornado that hit St. Louis on May 16, 2025. 

“I went to visit St. Louis on May 20th, very close to after the tornado hit,” Watkin said. “It was unrecognizable. It was like going to Mars or something. And all these incredible trees that I figure probably date back to before the 1904 World’s Fair [were gone]. … I had worked in a lot of those neighborhoods, and then to come down and see all these ancient, hundreds and hundreds-of-year-old trees just lying there dead, it was very shocking. And I was trying to figure out how to process all that. And Adrienne asked me to do the show, and that was the first thing that came to mind.”

“Wow its been a long road” by Maria Ojascastro | Courtesy of Red Gate Gallery

The works shown in “Spirit of the Trees” are a diverse mix of media, ranging from traditional styles of photography and painting to techniques such as photomicrograph and cyanotype print. Photomicrographs involve taking photographs through a microscope, while cyanotype prints are an early photographic style, in which paper is coated with a light-sensitive iron salts that, when exposed to the sun, turn blue. Artists layer physical objects atop the paper to block light, creating white patterns in the deep blue pigment.

“I wasn’t going to do just a painting show or just a photography show,” Watkin said. “I really wanted to mix it up because when you look at a painting, it’s very different from looking at a documentary photograph. And they express very important things, but they express very different purposes. There are trees in every single artwork that’s in there. And very differently expressed. But they connect to the human disaster that happened and the impact of the storm on people’s lives.” 

The artists are equally varied and include several WashU connections — Sam Fox professor Stephen Leet contributed an oil-on-canvas painting separated into four squares, each showing a section of a tree in a different climate. Each segment is also painted using a different technique: in one quadrant, the tree is sharp and clear, almost hyper-realistic, while another quadrant is blurred, relying on color variations to differentiate leaf from branch.

“We do have an enormous amount of students and faculty showing at the space,” Outlaw commented. “The other thing that I really try to have happen is intergenerational experience within the shows … I am much less interested in art hierarchy, and I always encourage people to accept artwork based on the imagery, not the CV.”

The environmental theme of “Spirit of the Trees” lines up with Outlaw’s work and the gallery’s goals, as well as Watkin’s general body of work. Outlaw creates sculptures out of post-consumer plastic collected from the community in which the installation will be set, and her focus is on social engagement as much as ecological stewardship. She engages the community in every step of her process, from collecting plastic to building the sculpture, and she designed the Red Gate Gallery to focus on social engagement as well. 

“We don’t show painting for painting’s sake. If we’re going to show paintings, it’s going to be about some issue,” Outlaw said. She sees art as a potent form of communication and empathy and wants the Red Gate Gallery to enable those aspects. 

“Art can be a very powerful way to better understand a subject or to give you a new lens on a subject. … when people see the artwork, and as they’re dissecting what that imagery is, whether it’s sculpture or performance or painting or photography or whatnot, they really seem to come to a better understanding of what that artist’s topic is.” “Spirit of the Trees” fulfills all the requirements, giving artists in the St. Louis community, as well as viewers of the gallery, the space to reflect on the tornado and come to terms with the damage it wrought on the community.

“Spirit of the Trees” is not the only exhibition opening at the Red Gate Gallery right now — in the downstairs gallery, Red Gate is displaying Wydown Middle School’s “Coming of Age” series for the third year in a row, this year titled “Coming of Age in 2026: A Counterstory.” The Coming of Age project at Wydown was started in 2020 by seventh grade language arts teacher Erin Ott, who drew her inspiration from a New York Times article on another school doing a similar project. The initiative grew to include all seventh grade students at Wydown Middle School, and it was displayed at the school for two years before Red Gate opened and began partnering with the school to showcase the students’ work. 

The project’s parameters are broad, giving the students space to express themselves through various forms of media. 

“We have guiding questions, and they can choose whichever one they like. One question is ‘what makes me me, what story do I want to tell about who I am?’ Another is about ‘the role of stereotypes in my life and how I see myself in my own life and in society because of those stereotypes.’ And then the third is about ‘what it’s like being a teen at this time — how technology or things available right now influence who you are or how you see yourself,’” Ott said.

“We start with a writing piece, and we don’t generally limit what they write,” Ott said. “Most focus on poetry or a short narrative. Then we ask them to develop an art piece that complements their writing.”

The subject matter of the artwork is just as varied. 

“Adolescence is a moment of change, so we have many pieces where kids reflect on early or recent childhood and how much has changed in just a few years. They’re saying goodbye to parts of childhood they can’t access anymore. … We also have kids who reflect on regrets, moments in their past they now see differently. Some write about things they’re proud of, accomplishments, moments when they felt really good. I love the pieces where kids directly address stereotypes. We have pieces where kids say people think Gen Alpha can’t read or can’t be taken seriously, that they’re the ‘brain rot generation,’ and then they say, ‘Here’s who I actually am.’”

Ott has clear hopes for what viewers will take away from the exhibit. 

“The main goal is to provide a counter-story to popular narratives about kids this age. When people hear I teach seventh grade, they often react with horror and talk about how they’d never want to go back to that age. There’s a dominant narrative about how awful it is to be 12 or 13,” Ott said. “Now with social media, people think they know what kids this age are like, but that content is curated for views. It’s not the true story, and it doesn’t show how thoughtful or concerned these kids are about the world.” 

The two exhibits, “Spirit of the Trees” and “Coming of Age,” are intentionally paired together. “Coming of Age” is shown in tandem with another exhibit each year. 

“Many of my students were directly impacted by the tornado and the changing landscape of their neighborhood. They still talk about it in class. Whether that shows up explicitly in their projects, I’m not sure, but they’ve been deeply affected,” Ott said. “They talk about it all the time.”

Together, the two exhibitions tell stories of life and loss, change and selfhood, growth and identity, connection and community.  

A public reception for “Spirit of the Trees” will be held on Friday, Jan. 30 from 5-7 p.m., paired with cookie decorating. The Red Gate Gallery is open Tuesday through Friday, from 10 a.m.-3 p.m. “Spirit of the Trees” runs until April 12, 2026, and “Coming of Age in 2026: A Counterstory” is on display Jan. 30-Feb. 2.

“Hollow” by Chris Bettencourt | Courtesy of Red Gate Gallery

“Uprooted” by Jayashree George | Courtesy of Red Gate Gallery