Gallery for art guild opens in Cape

Watch video Cape Girardeau's newest gallery opened Wednesday night, providing a home for the diverse artists of the Bollinger County-based Cat Ranch Art Guild.

The gallery is a collaboration between local neurosurgeon, photographer and Missouri Arts Council board member Dr. Joel Ray and the guild, run by Bollinger County artist Jeanie Eddleman.

Cat Ranch artists, their friends and family and other local arts supporters attended the grand opening of the gallery at 1930 Broadway two nights before its inaugural First Friday. At least one owner of another Cape Girardeau gallery was on hand, lending her support to her colleagues.

"I feel like the more people realize what art is about in Cape it will help all of us," said Garden Gallery owner Linda Bohnsack, who said she was impressed by what she saw at the Wednesday night opening. "We have a lot of talent in our area."

The open space in the facility was used to display the art of Cat Ranch members, a diverse group numbering around 60 artists and arts supporters from Bollinger County, Cape Girardeau, Jackson and as far away as Oklahoma and Arkansas. Sculptures, stained glass, paintings, drawings and other media were all on display.

For the Cat Ranch, the gallery is a space to display its work in along with the larger artistic community in the Cape Girardeau area. For Ray, the collaboration will provide a space for his vision of networking artists with important players in the local business, academic and political communities -- a relationship he hopes will make the arts an important facet of economic development in Southeast Missouri.

The gallery will also allow Ray to become more in touch with the local arts community, he said.

"Now that I'm with the Missouri Arts Council, it's a huge entree for me to go into the artists' world," Ray said.

Ray and Eddleman have known each other since 2000, when Ray was the neurosurgeon for Eddleman's uncle, Tom Runnels. Runnels was a Marble Hill artist who died from brain cancer in 2000. The guild was started in his memory, and the name comes from Runnels' Bollinger County property where he did his work, the Cat Ranch.

Eddleman said she and Ray lost contact for a number of years before Ray contacted her to help him market his photography. As payment for her help, Ray said, he offered his WESTRAY photography studio space. Eddleman then decided to use the space as a Cape Girardeau base for the Cat Ranch.

The new space helps give the guild, which boasts members who are also in the Visual Arts Cooperative and the Arts Council of Southeast Missouri, a higher-profile presence in Cape Girardeau and a presence in the monthly First Friday art walk, but Eddleman said the Bollinger County Cat Ranch is still "home base."

Ray sees the collaboration as an opportunity to foster more business for the other artists in the guild.

He said the space will be used to rotate exhibits and bring in people with grant-writing expertise to help local artists understand the Missouri Arts Council's grant-writing process.

The gallery will be open from noon to 6 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and from noon to 9 p.m. the first Friday of every month.

msanders@semissourian.com

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