Date: August 22, 2026
Time: 1-3 pm
Join Rachel Equity for a day of making collages using unconventional materials. Inspired by the meditative quality of Vania Evangelique’s photography, we will construct abstract dreamscapes. Rachel will guide participants through the thought process behind collaging and how to express pensive feelings through materials like printed images, cardboard, glue, and paint. We encourage participants to bring their own materials as well if desired, but all necessary materials are provided.
This is a free event and all ages are welcome to participate. RSVP is required, please click the button below to register. Participants will take home their original artwork inspired by both Evangelique and Wilkinsburg.
CDCP x The Future is Black x WCDC Present: Vania Evangelique
Opening reception: Saturday, July 25, 2026, 12-3 PM
On view: July 25, 2026 - October 17, 2026
Gallery hours: Every other Saturday 12-5 PM
CDCP, The Future is Black, and WCDC are thrilled to kick off the 2026-2027 season of Art All Over with a solo exhibition by artist Vania Evangelique. We’re excited to partner with The Future is Black for this upcoming season and are looking forward to the future of this program under their vision and leadership.
Light and language; what it illuminates and what it does not is the means in which I position my subjects, capturing an experience lived in a moment. I do this through the mediums of photography and writing where I purposefully seek out still moments that are found in nature, the environments in which I am placed, and the intimacy of my own home. And by doing so the mundane, transitional, and stretching processes of life are able to be fully expressed. The pursuit of still moments was born out of my upbring in Brooklyn, NY and the stark contrast of my later youth in Bethlehem, PA. I spent time analyzing and digesting the difference of feeling between grass and hot concrete on my feet, the smell of pollen versus car exhaust, the subtly of voices amongst the city to the insects singing to the evening night, and how looking into the night sky lent itself to city lights versus the vastness of the stars. This dichotomic rhythm of existing was one that required me to be attentive to environments that were transforming outwardly and inwardly. It’s in this noticing that I have become more present to the current moment where I now use place as an anchor, bringing with it an awareness of space. Both my photography and writing takes on a narrative approach that is often emotionally expository, revealing itself my deeper thoughts, feelings and observations of the world that I encounter. No matter the medium, my intention is to present an invitation to pay closer attention to the world we occupy; and create within it a space to appreciate the beauty found in the unlikely of places.
About Vania Evangelique:
Vania Evangelique (b. 1996) is a photographer and writer from Bethlehem, PA by way of Brooklyn, NY. Since receiving her BA in Photojournalism in 2018 from Point Park University, she has participated in residencies such as Brew House Arts as an artist and curatorial resident, exhibited with the Associated Artist of Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, and was a studio artist with arts letters & numbers in Albany, NY. Curatorially, she enjoys fostering the voices of artists and has since served as an art installer apprentice with Casey Droege Cultural Productions, photographed arts news events with nextPittsburgh, and illuminated the Pittsburgh art scene through artist reviews with the commercial gallery Wick Monet.
About The Future is Black:
Ahmed Tacumba Turner Jr. is a Pittsburgh-based multidisciplinary arts professional, curator, and community development strategist. As Founder and Creative Director of The Future Is Black (2019–Present), he has produced 10 exhibitions and showcases across Pittsburgh's cultural institutions, distributing $15,000+ in artist stipends, facilitating $5,000+ in artwork sales, and engaging over 2,000 attendees — building a sustained platform for BIPOC artists in the region.
Tacumba's curatorial practice centers the visibility, economic sustainability, and cultural power of Black artists. In 2025, he served as Guest Curator and Moderator for Being Seen at the August Wilson African American Cultural Center — the first exhibition at that institution to feature a local guest curator — presenting 38 Pittsburgh artists. He also co-curated Fruits of Seeing (Mavuno) at Sweetwater Center for the Arts as part of their 25th anniversary programming.
Beyond the gallery, Tacumba brings a systems-level perspective to cultural work. He serves on the City of Pittsburgh's 2050 Comprehensive Plan Community Working Group, and holds advisory roles with Upstream, the Vital Village Network, and the O'Connor Campaign Arts Advisory Council.
WCDC's Lohr Gallery
725 Wood St.
Pittsburgh, PA 15221
"Picture This" on view starting Saturday, November 8 at the August Wilson African American Cultural Center
We're thrilled to celebrate the opening of Picture This, a photography exhibition celebrating intergenerational connections, opening to the public at the August Wilson African American Cultural Center on November 8.
Picture a neighborhood where generations don’t just coexist, they connect! Join Age-Friendly Greater Pittsburgh and Casey Droege Cultural Productions for Picture This. Featuring vibrant photos by renowned Pittsburgh photographers, audio recordings, and engaging activations, this new exhibition reveals the power of connecting across generations. Picture This: A Photo Exhibit Celebrating Intergenerational Connections August Wilson African American Cultural Center 980 Liberty Ave Pittsburgh, PA 15222
On view: November 8, 2025 – February 1, 2026
Open to the public:
Thursday: 3pm-6pm
Friday: 3pm-6pm
Saturday: 1pm-5pm
Sunday: 1pm-5pm
Intuitive Watercolor Painting: Embracing Uncertainty Workshop
Intuitive Watercolor Painting: Embracing Uncertainty Workshop
Saturday, August 23rd
12-3pm
Free + All ages
WCDC’s Lohr Gallery
Join us on Saturday, August 23 from 12-3 pm at the WCDC's Lohr Gallery for a special workshop about tapping into your intuition to find expressive potential with the help of watercolor paints. In this WCDC workshop join artist Jessica Peña Heberle for a hands-on workshop that explores watercolor and mixed media as a tool for self-reflection and storytelling. Using watercolors, charcoal, colored pencils, and graphite, we’ll slow down and give form to parts of ourselves and memories by using color, texture, and organic shapes.
This free workshop is open to all levels and ages—no experience necessary, just a willingness to experiment! All materials will be provided. RSVP required to account for materials. Click the button below to reserve a spot.
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.