CDCP x WCDC Present: Jessica Peña Heberle

CDCP x WCDC Present: Jessica Peña Heberle

Artist Reception: Saturday, June 28, 12-3pm

On view: June 28-October 4, 2025
Gallery hours: Every other Saturday, 12-5pm

We’re thrilled to have Jessica Peña Heberle as our exhibiting artist for CDCP x WCDC Present: Art All Over

Jessica Peña Heberle (b. 1981) is a multidisciplinary artist from Erie, PA. She lives and works in her home studio in Wilkinsburg, PA. She spent her twenties back packing across Europe, traveling and moving around the US before calling Pittsburgh home. Her art process
includes painting, drawing, comics, zines, art books, and found objects. 

Jessica’s paintings depict figures in dialogue with the natural world—bodies of water, forests, and rock formations. These environments serve as emotional landscapes where figures drift between intimacy and detachment, engaged with their incorporeal selves, personal narratives, and the charged spaces they inhabit. Themes of anxiety, loneliness, physical trauma, and the influence of the unconscious mind thread through her work. These emotional states are not illustrated directly but emerge through gesture, posture, and atmosphere.

In the studio, Jessica embraces a process of uncertainty. Each piece begins without a fixed plan, evolving intuitively through layered experimentation. She works with various mediums, including watercolor, gouache, inks, colored pencil and graphite. Layering multiple mediums creates texture and movement within each piece and is a key component to her studio process. It is a vulnerable, creative practice where curiosity and obsessive mark making guide the form and feeling of each painting.

The show will be open to the public every other Saturday from 12-5 pm on the following dates:

June 28
July 12
July 26
August 9
August 23
September 6
September 20
October 4

WCDC's Lohr Gallery
725 Wood St.
Wilkinsburg, PA 15221

Pedantic Summer 2025 Cohort Meet and Greet

Join us on Tuesday, June 3, 2025 at the KST Alloy Studios from 6-8pm to welcome our fifth Pedantic cohort. The Pedantic Residents will be giving brief presentations on their backgrounds and their practices.

Pedantic Arts Residency (Pedantic) is a month-long cross-disciplinary program co-hosted by Headwater Media and Casey Droege Cultural Productions. We have invited three residents whose practices span visual art, curating, and writing to explore the city of Pittsburgh and its creative communities.

We’re looking forward to welcoming zhanraw (Visual Artist), Allison Lacher (Curator), and TyLie Shider (Writer).

This is a free event, and RSVP is requested to attend. Click the button below to RSVP. Registration will also be available at the door.

zhanraw (she/they) is a multidisciplinary artist whose work spans sound, film, poetry, performance, and installation. A Ukrainian immigrant with a career in science, data, & technology, her art integrates computer mediated methods with deeply humanistic themes. Her recent work, Unsaid 1 & 2, debuted in 2024 with a live performance by the Bergamot Quartet, Payton MacDonald (marimba), multi-channel audio, and video projection. Like many prior works, it endeavors to slow down and let blossom the interstitial and manifold aspects of experience: matters of attention, conditions of embodiment, perceptions of self, time, the other, and one’s environment. Her interdisciplinary approach reflects her fascination with how technology can bridge the personal and the societal, turning complex questions into immersive experiences that provoke both thought and feeling.

Alison Lacher (she/her) is a visual artist, curator, and arts administrator based in Springfield, Illinois. She is a two-time recipient of the Illinois Arts Council Artist Fellowship Award, recognized for both her independent and collaborative practices. She has been awarded residencies with the Ellis Beauregard Foundation, Ox-Bow, ACRE, Vermont Studio Center, The Luminary, and Signal Fire on the U.S.-Mexico borderlands.

She serves as Director of the Visual Arts Gallery at the University of Illinois Springfield and Co-Director of STNDRD Exhibitions, a curatorial platform dedicated to site-responsive contemporary art. She has curated exhibitions at venues that include the Illinois State Museum, Monaco, the Chicago Artists Coalition, Fort Gondo Compound for the Arts, and NON STNDRD at the National Building Arts Center, as well as for the Terrain Biennial. Lacher has been a HATCH Projects curatorial resident with the Chicago Artists Coalition and a guest artist and curator at institutions including the NARS Foundation (Brooklyn), the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Washington University in St. Louis. 

TyLie Shider (he/him) is an American writer, a New Jersey State Council on the Arts Individual Artist Fellow, and the inaugural playwright in residence at ArtYard. A McKnight Fellow in Playwriting at the Playwrights’ Center, he is a recipient of Premiere Stages’ Liberty Live commission, two consecutive Jerome Fellowships, and an I Am Soul playwright in residence at the National Black Theatre. Recent projects include Security Watch, Certain Aspects of Conflict in the Negro Family, The Gospel Woman, Whittier and his filmmaking debut Sign O’ the Times. Screenwriting credits include: Truant. He holds a BA in Journalism from Delaware State University and an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU. A proud member of the Dramatist Guild, he is currently a Professor of Graduate Playwriting at Pace University, and a staff writer for Minnesota Playlist where he writes a regular column on Creative Discipline.

The City of Pittsburgh and American Rescue Plan Act Support for Artists Grant

Overview

The City of Pittsburgh, with funding through the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), is launching the Support for Artists Grant Program, to be facilitated by Casey Droege Cultural Productions. These ARPA funds are meant to support the recovery of the City’s arts and culture sector from the COVID-19 pandemic. The Support for Artists program specifically supports the economic recovery of individual artists. Through this program, 75 one-time grants will be awarded at levels of $500, $1,500, and $3,000. 

Twenty-five artists will be selected for each grant amount and will receive a one-time deposit. Grants will be awarded to individual artists working in any and all disciplines who have experienced a disruption to their income stream due to the COVID-19 pandemic as of March 3, 2021 or later. Individual artists must currently be residents within the City of Pittsburgh municipal boundary (see map). Selected artists may be required to provide financial evidence in the form of tax statements or pay stubs. Throughout the course of this program, the City of Pittsburgh is required to follow all federal ARPA guidelines and all other applicable law. Artists are responsible for personal tax implications associated with an award.

Applications for the grant program will open on May 5, 2025, and will be due by 11:59 PM EST on June 16, 2025. Awarded grantees will be identified through a two-step process involving an eligibility assessment followed by a lottery system, all conducted by a review committee. Awarded grantees will be notified by September 1, 2025.

To learn more about this opportunity and to apply, click the button below.

CDCP x WCDC Present: Olga Mendenhall

On view: June 29-October 12, 2024
Gallery hours: Saturdays 12-5pm

CDCP x WCDC Present: Olga Mendenhall is now open to the public.

Internationally acclaimed creative expert and painter Olga Mendenhall brings years of artistic brilliance to the realms of art and design. Originally from St. Petersburg, Russia, Olga ventured to the USA in 2011, eventually making Pittsburgh her artistic haven. Olga resided in Wilkinsburg for over 6 years when she first moved to Pittsburgh 10 years ago.  Remarking on her time in the borough, Olga said, “[Wilkinsburg] left unforgettable memories and made me feel like home for the first time since I moved to USA from Russia.”

WCDC's Lohr Gallery
725 Wood St.
Pittsburgh, PA 15221

Photo credit: Hannah Colen

2024-2025 Season of CDCP x WCDC Present: Art All Over

We’re thrilled to announce the 2024-2025 Season of CDCP x WCDC Present: Art All Over

Starting in June, join us for a series of exhibitions highlighting local artists with ties to Wilkinsburg. Each artist will also host a free workshop that coincides with their exhibition. Make sure to follow us on Instagram to learn more details on these upcoming events.

Olga Mendenhall
June 29-October 12, 2024

Mo’ney Thomas
November 2, 2024-February 15, 2025

Charlotte Ka
March 1-May 31, 2025

Gallery hours: Saturdays 12-5pm

Take our survey for a chance at a $20 Visa Gift Card

Pittsburgh-area artists, we want to hear from you!

We’re collecting information from Pittsburgh-area artists about skills and services they’re interested in learning to advance their careers. We hope to address some of these at CDCP and share them with peer organizations in the area. Please fill it out to the best of your ability by June 21st. Two participants will be chosen at random to receive a $20 Visa Gift Card.

Click the button below to take the survey. Visa Gift Card winners will be notified in early July.

(really into surveys and also photography? Try Silver Eye's survey too)