Pencil on Paper Gallery | Art That Belongs to Everybody

It Started With a Sheet of Paper and a Pencil — and It Was Always for This.

Before there was a gallery, there was a little girl watching her mother. A fashion designer sketching school clothes at the kitchen table — pencil moving across paper, an idea becoming real. That image stayed with Valerie Gillespie for decades. And when Emmanuel and Valerie Gillespie opened the gallery in Dallas’s Design District in 2019, they named it for that moment.

Pencil on Paper Gallery is a two-level Black-owned art space at the end of Algiers Street — a gallery, a classroom, a community living room. Owner and artist Valerie Gillespie, alongside her husband, artist Emmanuel Gillespie, built a space that does what most galleries don’t: it makes everyone feel like they belong there.

Growing up in Dallas in the 1980s and 90s, Valerie remembers galleries so formal they felt unwelcoming to a young Black artist. She didn’t forget that feeling. She built the antidote. Pencil on Paper hosts exhibitions from both emerging and established artists, as well as workshops, artist talks, and classes designed for all ages, all backgrounds, and all skill levels.

The gallery’s curatorial approach is rooted in the connection between artist, vision, and community — showcasing work that speaks, tells a story, and has something to offer everyone who walks through the door.

Pencil on Paper extends a proud legacy of Black-owned art spaces in Dallas-Fort Worth — joining institutions like the Arthello Beck Gallery and Kinfolk House in building the infrastructure for Black artistic life in North Texas.

Valerie’s dream is bigger still: artist residencies, where creators live above and exhibit below, building work and community in the same breath. That future is already designed into the space.

Their upcoming solo show — *GRIT* by artist Dawn Okoro, opening January 10th, 2026 — is exactly the kind of curatorial vision that sets this space apart. In a city where gallery walls don’t always reflect the full range of Black creativity, Pencil on Paper is changing that, one exhibition at a time.
pencilonpapergallery.com | @pencilonpapergallery