Serving youth has been a foundational effort at Intersect since the beginning.  We serve youth across the city, with a particular focus on Gravois park, the neighborhood of St. Louis most densely populated with youth, with 40% of the population below 18 years old.  Our efforts include an afterschool program 5 days a week, in-school arts integrated education for middle schoolers, a summer teen apprenticeship program, elementary summer camps, and classes with alternative education groups. Free to our community, these programs focus on nurturing imagination, building fine motor skills, problem solving and job readiness skills, and developing social-emotional skills particularly in conflict resolution and violence prevention. 

We support makers of all levels to learn and create through our Community Ceramics Studio, Woodshop, Commercial Kitchen, Dance studio, Darkroom, Printmaking studio, and Recording Studio. With a heart tuned to accessibility and hospitality, Intersect offers adult classes, family workshops, free drop-in days, and studio memberships.

Through a diverse intersection of artists that share their reflections, research, and dreams for the world, these walls invite diverse audiences to listen.  Looking at a work of art that one thinks is beautiful increases blood flow to the brain by 10%, and floods our cells with dopamin (the falling in love hormone!) Looking at art activates the centers for identity and empathy, in other words, it makes me think about who I am, and imagine how I can connect to who you are.  (Your Brain on Art:The Case for Neuroaesthetics - Susan Magsamen -2019)

Looking at artwork that we don’t immediately understand can create a flow state, where the mind is “all in” and as we try to figure out how, why, what….it builds new neural abilities in connecting ideas in the world around us. 

Looking at art can make us fall in love, grow our brains to imagine more beautiful futures, and increase capacity for connection! 

Intersect currently curates 4-6 exhibitions a year in our 4000 sq.ft. gallery space, hosting work from local, national, and international artists. 

Dovetail, is an event series inspired by the Dovetail joint, an ancient carpentry technique that predates written history. The technique, while simplistic, is extraordinarily strong, aesthetically elegant, and can provide the structural framework for anything from a wooden drawer to an entire building.

In this series of events, the Dovetail joint functions as a metaphor for the coming together of different artistic mediums and diverse members of our community. While the effort of collaboration or interaction with one another can be simple or (more often) complex, when we create and partake in reciprocity, the results can create extraordinary frameworks for stronger, more elegant ways of being, thinking, and appreciating.

We host 4-8 Dovetail events per year, coordinating with each exhibition. The events can feature culinary artists, dancers, poets, thespians, or musicians who respond to the artwork or concept of the show, helping deepen our understanding and offering various entry points to connect us into that state of flow!

Intersect supports 24 private studios for professional artists of diverse backgrounds. We offer space, equipment, employment, and exhibition opportunities to equip artists with resources needed to make their insights and imagination come to life! 

Storytelling is at the heart of the human experience, and the heart of the performing arts. We currently partner with a number of professional and community dance companies who utilize our dance studio space. We hope to continue building a program of chamber performing arts projects in the near future!