Art, Jazz, and Reflections: The Children’s Art Carnival

Join exhibition curator Souleo to discover the role of music in the Children’s Art Carnival studio spaces and hear exhibition artists share their memories of the Children’s Art Carnival past and present. This event features recollections by artists Élan Cadiz, Dindga McCannon, and Ademola Olugebefola and a special live performance by Vanisha Gould.

Let us know you will be attending by registering for the program using this link:

https://events.leapevents.com/event/art-jazz-and-reflections-on-cac

Élan Cadiz is an interdisciplinary North American Visual Artist that deconstructs and balances her intersectionality through her projects. Her art and practice are grounded in the documentation of her personal narrative through the use of historical and domestic imagery. She holds an MFA in Fine Arts from the  School of Visual Arts where she was awarded the SVA Merit Scholarship, Paul Rhodes Memorial Award, and the Martha Trevor Award. Cadiz has been awarded commissions by the Studio Museum in Harlem, El Museo de Barrio, Art in Flux Harlem, Mount Vernon Hotel Museum, Weeksville Heritage Center and more.

Dindga McCannon grew up in Harlem and began her career studying with Harlem Renaissance artists including Jacob Lawrence andCharles Alston, as well as Richard Mayhew and Al Loving at the Art Students League of New York and the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop. She went on to become a pillar of the influential African-American Weusi Artist Collective, and was subsequently co-founder (with Faith Ringgold) of Where We At, a groundbreaking women’s collective affiliated with the Black Arts Movement.

Ademola Olugebefola is an educator, activist, and visual artist whose work encompasses woodcuts, lithographs, etchings, serigraphs, oils, ink, charcoal and pencil drawing, free-standing sculptures, murals and other forms. During the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, he was politically active and became one of the founders of the Weusi Artist Collective.

Vanisha Gould is a jazz vocalist, composer, and bandleader based in New York City. A graduate of Berklee College of Music, Vanisha has built an international reputation for her soulful voice, nuanced songwriting, and dynamic stage presence. She has performed around the globe, with appearances in Russia, Sweden, and at the renowned Copenhagen Jazz Festival. In New York, Vanisha has graced the stages of Smalls Jazz Club, Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, Minton’s Playhouse, The Django, the Jazz Gallery, and more.

This program is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Children’s Art Carnival in Harlem: The Making of Contemporary Artists, on view at the Wallach Art Gallery June 26 through September 13, 2026.

Children’s Art Carnival in Harlem: The Making of Contemporary Artists 

For the fourth iteration of its Uptown Triennial series, Wallach Art Gallery presents Children’s Art Carnival in Harlem: The Making of Contemporary Artists, an exhibition examining how a community art center emphasized creative freedom, experimentation, and communal bonds through the work of its affiliated artists. The curriculum would vary, morph, and evolve over the more-than-five-decades since its founding, grounded in the belief that working artists can be creative, art can build confidence and a strong sense of identity, and that community can bind people together through pedagogy and care. Often working between figuration and abstraction, the featured Carnival artists employ a wide spectrum of artistic practices such as painting, printmaking, and photography; legacy techniques such as quiltmaking and ceramics; as well as the incorporation of found objects, assemblage, and wearable art.