INDY FALL ARTS Issue
A close look at Wake County's collaborative cultural plan. A sign painter helms an old tradition.
Talking with Duke University's new vice provost of the arts. Exhibitions & performances to look for this season. AND MORE!
Raleigh | Durham | Chapel Hill
6 Wake Forest residents are upset the town's mayor announced—then walked back— an LGBTQ History Month proclamation. BY JANE PORTER
8 Candidate withdrawls mean slim competition in races for Chapel Hill Town Council and Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools board. BY CHASE PELLEGRINI DE PAUR
9 Residents are continuing to oppose a planned data storage facility near Apex. Meanwhile, the developer says it's an "ideal use" of the rural site. BY JANE PORTER
10 The INDY's endorsements for mayor and city council in Durham's upcoming municipal primary election. BY INDY STAFF
INDY FALL ARTS Issue
12 Wake County spends much less on the arts than its peer counties. Could a new collaborative plan help fill funding gaps? BY JANE PORTER
16 Talking with Deborah F. Rutter, Duke University's new vice provost of the arts. BY SARAH EDWARDS
18 Five art exhibitions to seek out this season. BY SARAH EDWARDS
22 Ten worthy shows hitting Triangle stages this season. BY LAUREN WINGENROTH
24 Raleigh sign painter Joseph Giampino thinks fast and works sharp, splashing color across the Triangle. BY NICK MCGREGOR
28 Work by artists huiyin zhou, Laura Dudu, and Jamaica Gilmer use photogaphy to tell stories about memory and family. BY COLONY LITTLE
30 Talking with Jameela F. Dallis about her debut poetry collection. BY SHELBI POLK
32 Talking with Riverside High School teacher Bryan Christopher about his new book, Stopping the Deportation Machine BY LENA GELLER
Clockwise from top left: COURTESY OF RED RIVER BOOKS; Burnout Paradise at CURRENT, Chapel Hill; Joseph Giampino in his Raleigh studio PHOTO BY MATT RAMEY; COURTESY BLOOMSBURY PUBLISHING; “Samantha” by Jamaica Gilmer IMAGE COURTESY OF THE ARTIST; "We Don’t Sweat in These Clothes" by Nicolas Lambelet Coleman COURTESY OF THE NASHER MUSEUM OF ART.
Last month, Jane Porter wrote about a developer’s plans to build a large data storage facility outside of Apex near New Hill in unincorporated Wake County. Jane has since learned more from the developer’s filings with the Town of Apex, town council meetings, and statements from the developer (we have an update to the original story on page 9 of this edition). Readers continue to share their reactions to the project, especially its potential power and water usage.
From reader LISBETH PFEIFFER via email:
As a resident near the New Hill data center, we are considered Wake County and not within the Apex town limits. The developer states that his data center will not strain the town allocated power supply. What about the county residents living within two miles of the data center? We lose power about once a month and Duke usually uses the excuse that a tree has fallen on a power line. What will happen once the data center is up and running? How often will we lose power, twice a month? We attended the Apex town meeting and we wore red. This is not the place to put a data center with two thousand homes within two miles, not to mention housing 600 feet from the proposed data center.
From reader LEE HOWELL by email:
First, I would like to commend your article on the current situation regarding the plans for a 190 acre “Digital Campus” aka, 230 megawatt data center that Natelli Investments is proposing in Western Wake County.
I happen to be one of the New Hill residents that is opposed to this proposal given its proximity to residential communities and its utilization of community resources. The developer says that this site would be a modest user of public facilities. What they failed to state is that their proposal would consume 230 megawatts of power from the local power grid. That is equivalent to one quarter of the total power output of Shearon Harris. In addition, their statement
regarding using “gray water” for cooling without having to use potable water is only partially correct. I work at a critical central utility plant in the area and there are always backups for redundancy. We utilize a similar reclaimed water system for our cooling tower needs however, we also have potable water connections for when the reclaimed system is not in operation.
The developer also states that this digital campus will create high-wage jobs. This may be true but data centers are fairly self-sufficient, only relying on minimal personnel to operate the servers and maintain the cooling systems and backup generators. This will not be a high-wage job boon for the community like a Fuji plant or the proposed Children’s Hospital Campus.
Let me end by saying I am not opposed to data centers. The ever increasing digital world we live in makes them a necessity.
However, I am opposed to data centers located this close to thousands of residential homes with the future of Apex and the surrounding areas to see growth move further into this area. The power consumption alone is also a major concern and one the entire area should be focused on because if Duke Energy deems that they need to make enhancements to the grid to support these data centers as well as urban growth, we the consumer will be on the hook with higher utility bills. Meanwhile, Natelli Investments will have made their money and moved on to the next development while they reside hundreds of miles away in Maryland.
Durham County Board of Elections
NOTICE OF DURHAM COUNTY MUNICIPAL GENERAL ELECTION
Tuesday, November 4, 2025
The 2025 Municipal General Election for the City of Durham, Town of Chapel Hill, Town of Morrisville, and Town of Cary, will occur in Durham County, NC on Tuesday November 4th. All precincts, excluding Precinct 26, will be open from 6:30 am until 7:30 pm. Precinct 26 –Rougemont will not be open because no city/town area lies within the precinct boundaries.
The following contests will be on the General Election Ballot:*
• City of Durham Mayor
• Town of Cary Town Council District A
• City of Durham City Council - Ward 1-3
• Town of Morrisville Mayor
• Town of Chapel Hill Mayor
• Town of Morrisville Town Council Districts 2 and 4
• Town of Chapel Hill Town Council
• Town of Morrisville Town Council At-Large
• Town of Cary Town Council At-Large
* All registered voters living within the respective municipality and applicable district will be permitted to vote.
Absentee By-Mail: Absentee by-mail voting begins on October 3, 2025. Absentee by-mail ballots can be requested fully online at the following link: https://votebymail.ncsbe.gov/app/home. Be sure to request your absentee by-mail ballot no later than October 21, 2025, at 5:00 p.m. All absentee by-mail ballots must be returned to the Board of Elections no later than 7:30 p.m. on Election Day.
Election Day: All active polling places in Durham County will be open on November 4, 2025, from 6:30 a.m. – 7:30 p.m. To find your Election Day polling place, please use the State Board of Elections Polling Place Lookup Tool at the following link: https://www.dcovotes.com/voters/voting/polling-locations.
Early Voting: Early voting in Durham County will occur from Thursday, October 16, 2025 –Saturday, November 1, 2025. Hours are consistent at all five early voting sites and are as follows:
• Weekdays: 8:30 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.
• Saturdays (Oct.18th and 25th): 8:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
• Saturday (Nov.1st): 8:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.
• Sundays (Oct.19th and 26th): 12:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
DURHAM COUNTY EARLY VOTING LOCATIONS
South Regional Library
4505 S. Alston Ave., Durham North Regional Library
Voter Registration Deadline: The voter registration deadline for the 2025 Municipal General Election is Friday, October 10, 2025 (25 days prior). Voters that miss the registration deadline may register and vote during the Early Voting period. Voters who are currently registered need not re-register. Registered voters who have moved or changed other information since the last election should notify the Board of Elections of that change by October 10th. Party changes are not permitted after the voter registration deadline. For more information, visit our website at https://www.dcovotes.com/voters/registration.
Same Day Registration: Voters are allowed to register and vote during early voting. It is quicker and easier to register in advance, but if you have not registered you can do so during Early Voting with proper identification. This same day registration is not allowed at polling places on Election Day. For more details on the requirements associated with Same-Day Registration during Early Voting, visit our website at https://www.dcovotes.com/voters/voting/early-voting.
Information regarding registration, polling locations, absentee voting, and other election matters may be obtained by contacting the Board of Elections.
Website: www.dcovotes.com
Phone: 919-560-0700
Email: elections@dconc.gov
Fax: 919-560-0688
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The Future for DSA Must Start Now
DSA’s move presents a rare opportunity: 17 acres in the heart of Durham that can be used for public good. A former school board member says local leaders should start planning for the site’s future now.
BY STEVE UNRUHE backtalk@indyweek.com
The decision to move the Durham School of the Arts (DSA) to a new location presents an immense opportunity for the community to think creatively about new uses for the property and a corresponding responsibility for local government leaders to move quickly and decisively to take advantage of this opportunity.
Let’s start with the responsibility to get moving. DSA plans to open the 2027 school year on its new campus. This means, to state the obvious, that two years from now a prime 17-acre, three-city-block parcel
in downtown Durham will be sitting vacant.
The former police station on Chapel Hill Street presents a case study in how long it takes local government to move (on anything) and the perils of demanding so much that nothing actually happens. As a neighbor of the present DSA campus, my fear is that we will be living next door to a giant empty lot for a decade.
There is no reason why the process to determine future use of the campus should not start now.
The ball is in Durham Public Schools’ (DPS) court—where it has been sitting for the nine months since a final decision was made to move DSA. For sure, the school board and administration already have their hands full just trying to run a school system, with years of neglect by the state and now federal governments.
As long as the site is used for education, it belongs to DPS. The school board has made it abundantly clear it would be prohibitively expensive to put a new school building on the property. So the broader community needs to be invited to participate in a conversation about appropriate uses.
The first step is to engage the community in a forum by which citizens can suggest uses for the site. Local governments do this all the time. They hire a community engagement firm to survey the community and bring the results back to the political leaders. If the school board and adminis-
tration are not prepared to take this step, then it falls to our county leaders to pick up the ball.
At best, it takes six to twelve months to conduct an engagement process. While it is moving forward, the school board, city, and county should also be looking at their own needs that could be addressed at the site.
The opportunity is immense. I am confident that we can do something fabulous and amazing at this site. Just brainstorming, and moving from north to south along the site, I can picture:
• The current student parking lot—downhill from the rest of the property—hosting affordable housing (or housing set aside specifically for educators); a fourto-five-story building would fit comfortably into the neighborhood.
• Athletic facilities run by Durham Parks and Recreation or the Durham YMCA.
The gym is a superb space, the largest in Durham outside of the two colleges. The locker rooms and weight room could be expanded, and heaven knows we need a community soccer field.
• The historic central building could house DPS administrative offices and a school board meeting room, preserving the original architecture.
• The previously renovated, and beautiful, middle school building could house a small middle or high school.
• The “black box theater” and Weaver Auditorium offer excellent performance venues for local theater companies.
This still leaves several parcels of land— each of which is larger than any other available spot downtown—for possible uses. I am confident that others in the community would have many other ideas. Let’s hear them.
Many of the costs of this renewal of the site could be covered. Market housing could be built as part of the affordable housing site or at one of the several other parcels on this large piece of property. DPS could sell its current site downtown to offset renovation costs.
The point here is “Let’s go!” Seventeen acres in the heart of Durham—this is a dream come true. Durham can prove that local government can act decisively, that as the last school bus pulls out two years from now, construction crews are waiting to pull in and get to work.
We can do this. Let’s go. W
Steve Unruhe retired from a career teaching math and journalism at Northern and Riverside High Schools. He served four years on the DPS school board. He currently is on the boards of the Trinity Park Neighborhood Association and Reality Ministries, both of which are adjacent to DSA. The opinion expressed is strictly his own.
Durham School of the Arts PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS
Wake County
Pride and Prejudice
Wake Forest Mayor Vivian Jones decided against issuing a proclamation for LGBTQ History Month, which falls in October, leaving many residents upset.
BY JANE PORTER jporter@indyweek.com
Wake Forest residents have recently started celebrating Pride Month in their town in October, and at a town board of commissioners work session earlier this month, mayor Vivian Jones looked poised to support their efforts.
“We’re going to have a proclamation proclaiming October as Pride Month in Wake Forest,” Jones said toward the end of the 45-minute-long meeting on September 2 during the commissioners’ reports portion of the session.
“The proclamation that you just mentioned is not one that I would be supportive of,” said commissioner Faith Cross when it was her turn to speak. No one else addressed the proclamation and the meeting went into closed session.
Then, in a social media post a week later, Jones said she had mixed up Pride Month, which traditionally happens in June, with LGBTQ History Month, which “is observed in October in cities and towns throughout the United States,” Jones wrote. But, she added, she came to the decision that Wake Forest will not recognize LGBTQ History Month at all.
“I apologize for confusing the two observances, but more importantly, I am terribly sorry for the discord it has generated in our community,” Jones wrote in a September 9 post on Facebook.
Jones said that since the September 2 meeting, she had heard from several people in the community “expressing strong feelings on both sides of the issue.” She explained that her willingness to recognize Pride Month was motivated by a commitment to the town’s strategic plan goal of “Fostering a Safe, Diverse and Welcoming Community.”
“I now realize that by expressing support for our LGBTQ community I may have unintentionally suggested the Town’s official support for one set of deeply held beliefs over another set just as deeply rooted,” Jones wrote. “Therefore, after careful consideration and as an acknowledgement of the diversity of convictions throughout our community, I have decided not to proceed with issuing any
proclamation related to LGBTQ History Month.” Jones did not respond to the INDY’s request for further comment.
In October 2021, Wake Forest adopted a nondiscrimination policy that protects residents from discrimination including on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. In June 2024, it signed onto Wake County’s nondiscrimination ordinance—which provides explicit protections for the LGBTQ community—joining Raleigh, Cary, Garner, Knightdale, Morrisville, Wendell, and Apex.
Last year, the nonprofit Wake Forest Pride, which works to create safe spaces and promote equality in the town, hosted its first Pride event in downtown Wake Forest. The nonprofit addressed Jones’s decision in a social media post of its own. The group says it plans to host its second festival celebrating Pride in Wake Forest on October 11, which is National Coming Out Day.
“Every human being deserves to live authentically,” the post states. “Every person deserves to be welcomed fully into their community. And every voice, especially those too often pushed aside, deserves to be heard.”
Jones has served as mayor of Wake Forest since 2001 and is up for reelection this year. Wake Forest commissioner Ben Clapsaddle is challenging Jones in the municipal election this fall for the town’s top seat. The race is officially nonpartisan, but Clapsaddle is a registered Democrat while Jones is unaffiliated.
Clapsaddle was absent from the September 2 work
session but says when he reviewed the video of the meeting, he was happy Jones decided to make the proclamation publicly, and “very disappointed” when she decided to rescind it, especially without having spoken to other commissioners first and giving them a chance to weigh in.
“It’s a shame, I think it’s a disservice to all of our citizens, not just the LGBTQ community alone, but all of us,” Clapsaddle says. “If we truly believe, and I do, that we’re a welcoming and diverse community, and that we respect everybody and treat everybody with dignity and honor, I don’t understand why you would back out from some political pressure. I’m very sad for that part ... we, as a community, are better than that.”
More than a thousand comments came in response to Jones’s Facebook post and it has so far been shared more than 100 times. Comments conveyed a mix of viewpoints but most expressed disappointment in the decision.
“So the lesson here is that intolerance, ignorance, and divisiveness is okay as long as it’s coming from the dominant, white, straight, and Christian culture,” wrote Facebook user Ricky Shmaters Gee. “Thank you Mayor for clarifying that.”
“As a new resident of Wake Forest, this is very disheartening,” wrote Facebook user Amy Lynn. “I would have been proud to live in a town that officially recognizes and celebrates LGBTQ history, but it seems like maybe Wake Forest is the type of place that capitulates to homophobia? Really not cool, not welcoming.” W
ILLUSTRATION BY NICOLE PAJOR MOORE
NEWS Orange County
Lean Slate
The end of two candidates’ campaigns leaves the Chapel Hill Town Council as the only truly competitive race in Orange County this fall.
BY CHASE PELLEGRINI DE PAUR chase@indyweek.com
J on Mitchell and Lynnee Argabright have withdrawn from the Chapel Hill Town Council and Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools (CHCCS) board elections, respectively.
The pair of withdrawals turns this already sleepy Orange County election cycle into a bit of a municipal snoozefest—five candidates are campaigning for four town council seats, and just three candidates are seeking three school board seats.
“I’m deeply grateful for the encouragement I received, but after weighing both the competitive dynamic of the race (five other highly electable candidates) and what I could realistically accomplish if elected (less than I’d like), I decided the opportunity cost of missing essentially two months of family life was too high,” said Mitchell in an email to INDY
“I applaud the other candidates for their willingness to serve and wish them well. I’ll continue my work on the
Planning Commission, as a board member of Shift Chapel Hill-Carrboro, and through my Substack newsletters.”
Argabright could not be reached for comment but voiced similar sentiments about the high demands of a campaign at a candidate forum last month that she attended as a spectator.
The news means that the CHCCS board will not see any major shake-ups—incumbents George Griffin and Riza Jenkins will hold their seats for four more years, while Melinda Manning will take the seat left vacant by Michael Sharp, who declined to run again.
Manning, noting the recent budget difficulties at CHCCS, is running on a platform of “radical transparency” as the board tries to maintain the district’s shining reputation despite local, state, and federal budget troubles.
The pair of withdrawals leave Chapel Hill’s town council election as the only truly competitive race in Orange Coun-
ty, and it’s still less than a barn burner. Of the four seats up for grabs, two are currently held by incumbents Camille Berry and Paris Miller-Foushee, who will both enjoy some name recognition advantage over challengers Wes McMahon, Louie Rivers III, and Erik Valera. (You can read more about all the candidates at indyweek.com/elections.)
No matter who wins, the council of the progressive town is going to have to continue to figure out how to do more with less as costs continue to rise and the federal government becomes less interested in helping people.
“Social service needs and the needs for folks who are struggling are just going to go up,” mayor Jess Anderson told INDY this summer after a particularly contentious budget vote. “We’re left holding the bag.”
Anderson is running unopposed for another two-year term, as the pirate portrayer motivated to run by a town bus crash made noises about challenging Anderson but never filed.
In Carrboro, mayor Barbara Foushee is facing only one challenger, Joe H. Lloyd Jr., who is a registered Republican bravely seeking election in a town where Kamala Harris won as much as 85 percent of the vote in some neighborhoods.
And the three seats for Carrboro Town Council attracted, you guessed it, three candidates.
Early voting begins October 16.
Chapel Hill Town Hall PHOTO BY ANGELICA EDWARDS
Tech Specter
A developer has filed plans for a new “Digital Campus” in Western Wake County.
BY JANE PORTER jporter@indyweek.com
Natelli Investments LLC, the developer behind a proposed data storage facility in western Wake County, filed a land use amendment and rezoning and annexation requests with the Town of Apex earlier this month. It plans to begin construction in late 2026 or early 2027 “pending all approvals and site planning,” according to a press release from the developer.
The company wants to build a new, 300 megawatt “digital campus” on a 190-acre farm property currently zoned for residential use off of Old U.S. Highway 1 in New Hill in unincorporated Wake County. The property will “support the processing and storage requirements of digital applications for residents in Apex and the greater Triangle area,” the release stated.
Large data facilities are popping up all over the country to power technology and run AI, and residential communities are grappling with their impacts, including the stagger-
ing amounts of water and electricity they typically require. Neighbors of the New Hill site, including many who live in the nearby Jordan Pointe planned community, are organizing to oppose the proposed data storage facility. An online petition against the data center proposal, launched in August, has more than 2,000 signatures.
On August 26, a group of more than 100 residents wearing red T-shirts attended the Apex Town Council meeting, where a representative, Jordan Pointe resident Doug Stewart, spoke for nine minutes and outlined neighbors’ concerns about air pollution, health risks, financial costs, and disruption from light and noise.
Stewart brought with him a wooden birdhouse he said was crafted by his grandfather, noting that his family has lived in the area for generations.
“Just like this birdhouse here, our community is handcrafted,” Stewart told the council. “It’s imperfect, but it’s
also built to last, just like our town is, and each of you as its council has been part of handcrafting a future here. Ultimately, you’re the composers of the Apex orchestra.” Neighbors wearing red returned to the town council at its September 9 meeting, where New Hill resident Michelle O’Connor spoke. She referenced states’ lack of regulations around data centers and their utility usage and pollution impacts and the large number of such facilities currently located in Virginia.
“Unfortunately, North Carolina has been declared the new Virginia, with developers coming forward with new [data center] project proposals by the day,” O’Connor told the council during its public comments session. “Here in New Hill, the proposed data center is now planned to operate at a capacity of 300 megawatts … Based on the information that is publicly available this data center, if built on the specifications known today, will become one of the largest in the state.”
In the press release, the developer said the town’s filing to amend Apex’s Unified Development Ordinance “clearly identifies the reasons why the zoning modification fits within the Town of Apex’s development standards.” The property “has been identified for industrial employment” in Apex’s “Advance Apex” 2045 Land Use Map Update that the town’s council adopted in 2019, according to the release.
The New Hill digital campus, it continued, “will consist of buildings housing computer servers, back-up generators and water storage.” Duke Energy’s transmission grid will serve the facility, according to the release, and it won’t create a strain on the town’s allocated power supply. Water used to cool the facility will come from recirculating nonpotable water, and the facility “will meet all land use requirement [sic], including noise, lighting and landscaping standards.”
Michael Natelli, the executive vice president for Natelli Investments, called the New Hill digital campus “an ideal use” for the property and local community.
“Data Storage Facilities are modest users of public facilities,” he said in the release. “Not only do they generate far less traffic than residential communities, but they create high-wage technology jobs and strengthen the technology eco-system in their region.”
According to Apex Town Council member Terry Mahaffey the town’s Environmental Advisory Board could hold a hearing on the proposal later this month. The plans could go to the town’s Planning Board in November and the town council by December.
Natelli Investments will provide more details about the proposal in the coming weeks and continue to hold community meetings.
THE INDY’S 2025 ENDORSEMENTS: DURHAM PRIMARY ELECTION
By INDY staff
With the start of early voting on Thursday, Durham voters have the option to maintain or make significant changes to the city council, with four of seven seats on the ballot. Whoever is elected will, over the next few years, make consequential decisions about the city’s future, and they’ll do so in an increasingly complex and fraught political climate. Council members will need to be focused on policy and able to work together strategically on the many fronts the city faces.
On the local level, the city has made progress on affordable housing, notably through new publicly supported developments downtown, but Durham—its residents, workers, small businesses, and natural environment—continues to feel the pressures of growth. Similarly, investments in the HEART program have contributed to improved community safety, but too many residents still experience gun violence on a regular basis.
At the federal level, the Trump administration has cut or otherwise thrown into uncertainty programs that benefit Durham and its residents and taken aim at policies the city often champions in its commitment to an equitable and welcoming community.
Durham’s next city council will influence the city’s growth well into the future through individual development votes and the rewrite of Durham’s Unified Development Ordinance, determine the
next phase for the HEART program, and guide a burgeoning city/county strategic plan to end homelessness. They’ll need to pass a budget inevitably shaped by federal funding cuts. And they’ll need to navigate a political environment where the kinds of inclusive and progressive values the city proudly wears could put a target on its back.
The choice of who navigates these challenges now rests with Durham voters. We at the INDY have spent the past several weeks thinking about these choices as well, and here you will find our endorsements.
We considered which candidates had prior experience relevant to the role and who understood what the council can and cannot do, and what it is already doing. We looked for people who would come prepared to meetings, work well with other council members, and be diligent and receptive in their decisions.
We reached out to all 18 candidates and spoke to everyone we could. We talked to others knowledgeable about local government, reviewed voting records, watched candidate forums, and relied on nearly a decade of collective experience covering city council meetings ourselves. We talked it through until we reached a consensus.
Here are the INDY’s endorsements for Durham mayor and city council Ward 1, 2, and 3 seats.
2025 Durham primary Election at a glance
Four Durham municipal races are on the ballot this fall: mayor and city council seats representing Wards 1, 2 and 3. Voters can make one selection for each race in the primary regardless of what ward they live in. The top two voter-getters in each primary will move forward to the November election.
The 2025 municipal primary for Durham will be held on Tuesday, Oct. 7. The 2025 municipal election will be held on Tuesday, Nov. 4.
The voter registration deadline for the municipal election is Friday, Oct. 10, at 5 p.m .
Early voting for the municipal primary will be held Sept. 18–Oct. 4 . Early voting for the November municipal election will be held Oct. 16–Nov. 1 . The absentee-by-mail voting period began on Sept. 5 for the primary and begins Oct. 3 , for the municipal election.
Polling places will be open from 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. on Election Day for both the primary and municipal elections.
LEONARDO WILLIAMS
The mayor’s vote carries no more weight than a single council member’s.
But the mayor has additional duties to act as an ambassador for the city. The mayor needs to be able to talk policy with officials at all levels of government and advocate for Durham’s needs. The mayor needs to be able to bring people into the tent and build consensus. The mayor needs to be visible and energetic, a cheerleader for Durham.
MATT KOPAC CITY COUNCIL WARD 1
MATT KOPAC has a classic résumé for public office. He served on the city’s environmental advisory board for six years, including time as chair, and currently is a member of the Planning Commission.
Equally concerning is the tenor Middleton has at times taken when responding to public commenters at council meetings, particularly in instances when he’s characterized them as either uninformed about municipal governance or activists who don't represent everyday residents. His comportment has strained his relationships on council as well: in November 2023, former mayor Elaine O'Neal devoted her final remarks as an elected official to expressing regret over appointing Middleton as her mayor pro tem.
In his two years as mayor, LEONARDO WILLIAMS has demonstrated he can fill that role. Williams is an effective spokesperson for the city, accessible to constituents and comfortable in the spotlight. Williams has brought together community partners to expand services for youth and convened city councilors, county commissioners, and school board members together for new regular meetings. At a time when local governments face funding uncertainty and risk drawing political ire, a stable presence who can tactfully navigate the politics of the role feels especially important.
But while Williams has succeeded in this capacity, we do have strong concerns with his near 100 percent approval of development cases and his demeanor at times toward constituents in public hearings. While we do endorse him for a second term given his success in the mayor’s unique role as an advocate and representative of the city, we hope that if he earns another from voters, he will be more discerning on development cases and make genuine efforts to build goodwill with constituents who feel he does not currently represent them.
Educator Pablo Friedmann is a strong candidate. A current Durham Public Schools administrator and member of the Governor’s Advisory Council on Hispanic/Latino Affairs, Friedmann is knowledgeable about the issues facing Durham and how government operates. He is active in the community and has long been working behind the scenes to organize in Durham. But being mayor is not a behindthe-scenes job, and we’d like to see Friedmann gain more experience in appointed and/or elected roles.
Anjanée Bell—longtime dance educator, the state’s Arts in the Parks coordinator, and daughter of former mayor Bill Bell—brings a commendable bottom-up philosophy. But we don’t see the relevant policy chops we’re looking for in the city’s top official.
Other mayoral candidates: Lloyd Phillips, Rafiq Zaidi.
On the Planning Commission, Kopac has deliberated over many of the same developments as the city council, asking thoughtful questions and offering pointed feedback to ensure community benefits and environmental protections.
He brings valuable experience in both environmental and economic fields. Kopac has worked for several years on sustainability initiatives, both as a consultant and in leadership positions at Burt's Bees. He cofounded the Durham Living Wage Project, which pushed local businesses forward in providing workers with better pay.
Building climate resilience and managing growth are top priorities for Durham. Kopac has a dynamic set of skills and experiences in both the public and private sector, and we think he’ll be an energetic and prudent new voice on the council who won’t be an automatic yes or no on development votes.
We commend DeDreana Freeman’s passion and work, especially to advance racial equity within city operations. But public disagreements involving her and other officials have contributed to tension on the council. We—and we think many voters—are ready for the council to move on from the interpersonal conflicts that have punctuated the last four years in Bull City politics and instead put more energy into the issues the city faces.
Among other Ward 1 candidates, we were impressed that nurse and researcher Andrea Cazales brought a health focus to her platform and prepared for her run by attending council meetings for the past year.
Other Ward 1 candidates: Elijah King, Samaria McKenzie, Sheryl Smith.
NO ENDORSEMENT CITY COUNCIL WARD 2
The INDY has endorsed Mark-Anthony Middleton in the past two Ward 2 elections, and we continue to appreciate certain aspects about him, like his focus on Durham’s gun violence crisis, his adeptness at synthesizing policy, and his institutional knowledge from years of service.
This is the first time Middleton has faced serious competition during a reelection bid. Unfortunately, neither challenger meets our bar for endorsement at this time. While Shanetta Burris brings relevant experience from political organizing and work on previous municipal campaigns, our research hasn’t convinced us she will have more productive relationships with council members. And while we respect Ashley Robbins’s experience and anticapitalist campaign (she’s refusing donations to highlight how money corrupts local politics), Robbins appears more focused on making a statement than actually seeking the office of city council.
Given these concerns, the INDY makes no endorsement in Ward 2.
CHELSEA COOK CITY COUNCIL WARD 3
Appointing CHELSEA COOK to the Ward 3 seat left vacant when Leonardo Williams became mayor ranks among the Durham city council’s best decisions in recent years.
An eviction defense attorney who worked at Legal Aid before recently joining the faculty at Duke Law, Cook brings a ground-level view of Durham’s housing crisis to a council wrestling with growth and development.
She stands out among her colleagues as someone who asks incisive questions that often reveal overlooked policy implications. She does her homework without arriving at the dais with predetermined conclusions and acknowledges when issues fall outside her expertise while still engaging substantively.
Cook’s instincts for both listening and leading were exemplified by her first action on council introducing a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza—not a safe choice for a newly appointed council member, but one that reflected clear constituent demand.
Her challengers in Ward 3 fall short by comparison.
Yet Middleton’s latest term has given us serious pause, both in his voting record and his approach to public input.
The frequency with which Middleton’s votes contradict constituents' positions (and in the case of SCAD and the ceasefire resolution, historic community opposition) is troubling. His near-universal and typically swift support for development cases raises questions about whether he could push for more community benefits.
Diana Medoff, a former Duke School elementary teacher, has shown impressive energy on the campaign trail, but prior to filing, her record of civic engagement is thin. Other Ward 3 candidates: Terry McCann, Durant Long.
INDY editor-in-chief Sarah Willets, culture editor Sarah Edwards, and staff writers Lena Geller, Justin Laidlaw, and Chase Pellegrini de Paur contributed to these endorsements.
Track Changes
Wake County spends much less on the arts than its peer counties. Could a new collaborative plan fill funding gaps and chart a new way forward?
BY JANE PORTER jporter@indyweek.com
In a few short weeks, the City of Oaks will hum with energy as residents and visitors converge on downtown Raleigh’s streets, plazas, bars, and nightclubs to catch bluegrass and Americana bands and celebrate the arrival of fall.
It’s all free, and with more than 200,000 people in attendance, you’d never know how little Wake County— North Carolina’s fastest-growing and most populous county and home to the state capital—spends on the arts.
“It’s a struggle,” says David Brower, the executive director of PineCone, the nonprofit hosting the Raleigh Wide Open music festival, of the fundraising. “It’s a struggle every single time, the big things are hard, and the little things are hard …. We go into it completely on faith that we’re gonna come out in the end.”
Along with the workaday challenges of budgeting, applying for public and foundational funding, and finding private
sponsors that come along with producing the festival each year, this year, PineCone has the added challenge of having to do it all on its own after Raleigh Wide Open’s predecessor, the International Bluegrass Music Association’s World of Bluegrass Festival, departed the city for Chattanooga.
“Free is hard,” Brower says. “We go into it with some startup money from municipalities, but most of it, we’re drumming it up ourselves from corporate supporters and keeping our fingers crossed that the weather is going to be good and people are going to come out and spend money.”
PineCone isn’t alone in facing these challenges. While arts organizations in Raleigh receive robust support from the city, much of that funding is tied directly to operations and programming. Organizations with capital needs, especially those that own their facilities, face steep challenges in coming up with the money to pay their mortgages and
rent, keep the lights on, and make needed repairs.
A new collaborative draft plan for arts and culture in Wake County, which was presented to the board of county commissioners on Monday, aims to address some of these challenges while supporting creative communities across Wake and strengthening “the arts and cultural environment for families, businesses, and residents,” according to the draft titled “Cultivating Creativity.”
“Cultivating Creativity charts this path forward, ensuring every resident can access meaningful cultural experiences in their own community, while positioning Wake County as a leader of artistic innovation and creative excellence,” the plan states.
But arts leaders say the need is dire—and immediate.
Raleigh’s Contemporary Arts Museum (CAM), a stalwart institution in the city’s cultural fabric, is considering selling its two-story, circa-1910 urban revival–style building in downtown’s Warehouse District, valued at $11 million. Its board chair, Charman Driver, says CAM’s leaders “are working hard to make sure CAM exists for many, many years,” but it’s hard to imagine the museum outside of its iconic space.
There’s also the storied North Carolina Theatre, which closed earlier this year after filing for bankruptcy. The nonprofit studio-gallery Artspace, near City Market, needs $5 million to replace its dated, 19-unit HVAC system, according to executive director Carly Jones. Across downtown, galleries and nonprofits alike—311 Gallery, the City Market Artist Collective, the Visual Art Exchange—have had to close or relocate because the rent is just too damn high and the funds aren’t there to support them.
“I think people take the arts for granted,” says Jones. She says while residents love public art and music festivals and family-friendly cultural activities, there’s a disconnect in the general public’s understanding of how much it takes to make these events happen, and how intentional arts supporters—governments, private and corporate funders, foundations—must be in ensuring artists can live and work
ILLUSTRATION BY NICOLE PAJOR MOORE
in Raleigh. The vast majority of the city’s cultural events, and certainly the free ones, are hosted by arts nonprofits—but even with the financial support they receive, it’s difficult to break even.
“If we want a thriving arts and culture sector, we have to put into [it], because artists are working individuals,” Jones says. “I love us, I love our city, but I also know we’re not proactive, we’re reactive, and my concern is it’s gonna get really empty down here. And then all of a sudden people are gonna be like, ‘Oh, Raleigh’s boring, there’s nothing to do there,’ because [artists are] who’s providing the things to do.”
A cultural master plan
Across Wake County, public support for the arts is strong. So is the cultural ecosystem that currently exists.
According to data from the Cultivating Creativity final draft plan, there are currently more than 300 nonprofit arts organizations in Wake. Together, they generate $103.7 million in revenues annually and $1.5 billion in creative industry earnings and support more than 51,000 creative jobs.
And while 71 percent of Wake residents participate in cultural activities frequently or occasionally, according to a survey of more than 1,700 residents, and “strong” personal support for government funding of the arts ranges from 71 percent (in Raleigh) to 51 percent (in Fuquay-Varina), at 41¢ per capita arts funding, Wake County is well below its peers.
Mecklenburg County, for instance, spends $7.73 per person on the arts. Orange County spends $4.65 per person. Fulton County, Georgia, Fairfax County, Virginia, and Montgomery County, Maryland, all peer counties to Wake in terms of population and growth patterns, spend $5.60, $4.38, and $6.61 per capita, respectively, on the arts.
Part of the reason for Wake’s low spending is that Wake County has 12 municipalities that United Arts Wake County, the county’s designated local arts agency (LAA), has to support on an annual budget of less than $2 million. Part of it is that the state legislature’s 2023 increase of $2.5 million to its $6.3 million NC Arts Council Grassroots Arts Program did not extend to counties with populations of more than 250,000.
“I understand the [state’s] philosophy behind trying to get funding to rural areas,” says Jenn McEwen, president and CEO of United Arts, who oversaw the development of the cultural master plan. “But [Wake has] small communities and rural areas, and so there’s a disproportionate kind of injury effect to our county.”
The result, McEwen explains, is that while United Arts can provide funds without spending parameters, those funds are more thinly spread, and organizations don’t always receive the full amounts they request.
Indeed, within Wake, the disparities between the county’s municipalities in regard to arts spending are stark. Raleigh allocates more than $27 million to arts and culture in its budget, including money that goes to public arts facilities and venues. Cary spends $6.2 million. Apex, the county’s third largest town, budgets $343,760 for the arts, while on the lowest end, Wendell and Morrisville spend $32,500 and $30,000, respectively.
The Cultivating Creativity plan takes a three-pronged approach to addressing some of these disparities by enhancing municipal infrastructure and capacity for the arts, supporting and enhancing a sustainable arts sector and creative economy countywide, and building access to and awareness of the arts and local culture.
Goals include establishing a collaborative arts and culture program for all 12 municipalities, helping municipalities expand their public arts programs, expanding the Wake
Murals project, developing new initiatives for nonprofits for operations and programming, launching a program to expand the county’s creative economy, establishing an artist in residence program, and enhancing the county’s cultural brand image and marketing initiatives.
The plan envisions several ways to fund its goals.
One idea is to establish a $1 million biennial Cultural Assistance Technical Program from the county’s interlocal hospitality taxes that would allow smaller towns (populations below 200,000) and organizations (budgets below $3 million) to apply for funding to support capital improvement projects and repairs. Another is to expand and diversify public and private funding through partnerships with corporations, foundations, and United Arts, in order to increase resources and build sustainability. Finally, there’s a proposal to expand annual general fund allocations to United Arts, which would be up to the county commissioners, in order to move “toward peer county levels over time.”
A tricky time for the arts
So where does this all leave the City of Oaks, home to downtown Raleigh, arguably Wake County’s premier arts and cultural destination?
While funding from the city is nationally competitive— Raleigh dedicates 1 percent of municipal construction funds for public art, and the Raleigh Arts Commission supports the arts at an annual rate of $5 per person— those funds typically can’t be used for arts infrastructure or other capital projects. And it’s a different landscape for artists and their advocates these days.
“It’s just a really tricky time for all the typical sort of arts organizations to do things like buy a building, revitalize a neighborhood, get low-interest loans to be able to build
Support for Government Funding of the Arts by Municipality
Left: Wake County United Arts Venues & Growth Density; Above: Community survey results from over 1,700 residents on their cultural participation patterns, priorities, and aspirations. COURTESY OF
it out,” says Sarah Powers, the executive director of Raleigh Arts, who has worked in the arts on both the nonprofit and policy side of arts fundraising. “Things are a lot different right now. So those struggles are compounding.”
Wake County, like Mecklenburg, is too large to receive more grassroots funding from the state, and, arts leaders say, Raleigh and Wake lack the corporate community buy-in that Charlotte has leveraged.
“I’ve been raising money for a long time for different organizations,” says Driver, CAM’s board chair, “[and while] the North Carolina Museum of Art does get big dollars, you just don’t see it [in Raleigh] like you see it in other cities. It’s an issue, and it’s one that we should probably look closer at.”
Philanthropic groups and individuals could also provide an avenue for capital support, but, local arts leaders say, there’s also a role for the county commissioners to increase funding to the arts.
The county’s interlocal fund—which has supported Marbles Kids Museum renovations, Red Hat Amphitheater’s relocation, the NC Museum of Art’s expansion, the expansion of the Raleigh convention center, and renovations at the Lenovo Center in the past—could be one way to support arts organizations and their capital needs.
“There is an opportunity for the county to step up,” says Michele Weathers, the producing artistic director of Raleigh Little Theatre. While there’s the recommendation in the Cultivating Creativity plan to use a limited amount of the interlocal fund for small towns’ and organizations’ capital needs, Weathers, Artspace’s Jones, and other arts leaders say it’s something county leaders could further explore.
Wake County and the City of Raleigh are currently accepting applications for more than $23.5 million in hospitality tax revenues available for qualifying projetcs, but the opportunity to apply is only offered once every two years, and only projects worth more than $100,000 that have already secured other funding are eligible. Smaller arts organizations are welcome to apply, but traditionally, parks, museums, stadiums and other athletics facilities have been awarded funds.
“There could be a bit more transparency, I think, for me personally, on how [the interlocal fund] could be an avenue as it relates to the per capita [spending], for us in Raleigh, particularly,” Weathers says.
Downtown Raleigh sees more than 20 million visitors annually, according to the most recent report from the Downtown Raleigh Alliance (DRA), and contributes more than $62 million to the city and county in property, hotel, and food and
drink tax revenue. With more than 180 public art installations and 18 performing arts and concert venues, not to mention free and ticketed arts and music festivals, First Friday events, and various museums and galleries, it’s fair to say arts and culture are major drivers of downtown foot traffic.
“We see arts as critical to downtown’s future,” says Bill King, the CEO of the DRA. “It’s been a big part of its overall rebirth. If you think about the last 20 years, some of the early sort of organizations and people who came into downtown to populate the storefronts, were artists.”
The DRA’s five-year economic development strategy, which it embarked on this year, centers public art and growing an arts and entertainment district in Raleigh as a way to activate downtown. The Illuminate Art Walk this past winter is one example, and the DRA has worked to provide studio, gallery, and pop-up spaces for artists as tenants.
“You’ve got to have the ecosystem for artists to actually be here and be supported and be able to make a living off of that, so you have them to feature and highlight,” King says. “So that’s a big part of [the plan].”
Still, with corporate support lagging behind places like Charlotte, and limitations on what funds from local governments and many philanthropic foundations can be used for, arts leaders say they’re increasingly looking to individuals who support the arts to help sustain local artists and their organizations. There’s something we can all do, it turns out, to support the arts, whether it’s going to shows and exhibitions, giving money when we can, talking to our elected leaders, or sharing our experiences on social media.
Weathers, of Raleigh Little Theatre, says they are working to “maximize our relationships with individuals, because that’s where we have the greatest influence.”
“People come to our shows, they take our classes, they volunteer here,” she says. “The arts do have an advantage, in that way, the performing arts, in particular, in that we get to see our patrons quite frequently.”
PineCone’s Brower echoes this. He says he wishes more residents would go out and “experience the arts and music,” attend the different cultural events—and then tell people about their experiences.
“Tell either their elected officials … or friends, just tell their community that they did that,” he says. “First and foremost, just come on out and see what’s happening out here, and really make it integrated into your life. And I think when people start integrating [art] into their lives, they’re going to say, ‘Hell yeah. This should be supported.’” W
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INDY FALL ARTS Issue
Art Defines Everything
A conversation with Deborah F. Rutter, Duke University’s new vice provost of the arts, about community collaborations and getting to know Durham.
BY SARAH EDWARDS sedwards@indyweek.com
Earlier this month, as students settled in across campus, Deborah F. Rutter began her job as vice provost for the arts at Duke University. She was hired following a national search and succeeds John Brown Jr., who resigned in late June after five years in the position.
The role is an impactful one, overseeing Duke Arts and the general direction of arts at the university during a fraught time for higher education. But hiring Rutter, who has decades of experience in the arts, is high-profile in other ways: She most recently served as president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, beginning in 2014—the first woman to head the nation’s cultural center. In February, President Trump fired Rutter amid a politicized purge of the institution that shocked and angered many artists, appointing himself as chair and Richard Grenell, an administration loyalist, as interim president.
A shift from nonprofit arts administration to a university setting is a profound change, but Rutter, who received an honorary doctor of arts degree from Duke in 2023, says
she feels confident in her ability to serve the university in this next era. “I think that the president and the provost of Duke University did not hire me with their eyes closed but with intentionality,” she tells the INDY. In late August, the INDY spoke to Rutter via video call, in between her time packing up her Washington, D.C., home as she prepared to move to Durham and start a new chapter. At the Kennedy Center, Rutter made her most significant mark with the REACH, a campus expansion that added educational and public-facing spaces. At Duke, Rutter stresses a commitment to getting to know the Triangle’s arts landscape and deepening community collaborations. She also says she is looking to find a piano teacher in Durham.
INDY: What drew you to this position?
DEBORAH RUTTER: I have been in senior leadership positions within performing arts organizations for a long time—
many, many decades—and as I was thinking about what I wanted to do after being at the Kennedy Center, it became clear that there are so many big ideas and impactful projects that I still wanted to engage in. I didn’t want to walk away from an active life of contributing to the world of art and culture, but I needed a different environment.
What is one of the first things you’re going to do when you get to Duke? What is opening week going to look like for you?
I believe that fate has a lot to do with a lot of things. As soon as I was public, as soon as we had announced it, I looked at the calendar and realized I needed to figure out where I was going to live, and that I could come see the American Dance Festival [ADF] at the same time because it’s at Duke. So that’s who I am—a consumer of art and culture. And, you know, it’s been a drought for me for the last six months. It used to be that I would go to five, six, seven events a week, and I’m down to less than a couple of dozen over the last six months. It’s going to be fun.
You’re a bit familiar with Duke already, because your daughter, I believe, went to Duke. What are the ways that you’re going to get to know Duke and also the broader community?
I got to know East Campus and then downtown Durham, because my daughter’s a foodie and knew all of the great places to go. She lived on … Ninth Street, so I feel like I
Deborah F. Rutter PHOTO BY TODD ROSENBERG
know that area. But for me, in this role, I really need to understand the culture and the people. I have a personal philosophy that every community has a culture to it. I didn’t [always] understand this—I grew up in Los Angeles and thought everybody was like Los Angeles, but then I started going to other places in the world, and worked in other cities, and I realized that every community has a personality and a culture to it. So while I know Duke and I know restaurants and can drive around a little bit—I’ve been in the Nasher, the Rubenstein Arts Center, and some of the other theaters—I don’t really know it, and I don’t know the personality of Durham, of Duke, of the Triangle. It’s important for me to really understand how people feel, think, react.
How do you see arts programming intersecting with education?
I am a stalwart believer that every person learns differently and with different skills. Some learn by reading, some by doing, some people need to live it out. Everybody learns in a different way and feels drawn to learning from different stimuli. I saw this myself, because I had opportunities in the arts—I started out in public school and then chose to go to places where I could continue to explore my interest in the arts, not ever even initially having an idea that I would work in the arts as a mother. I watched my child learn through arts integration: she was much better at history, language, even math and science, by having it integrated with art.
There is a connection that you and I, and my colleagues, understand, but the rest of the world does not always understand, which is that art is central to who we are as human beings. Everything that we do and experience has creativity central to it. Even the historian and how they put their story together, sharing it with others, is using a level of creativity. This is something that I’ve only really been able to understand more fully and develop a little in my head, but to be in a university setting, and for us to be able to say art and creativity and culture define everything that we do—biology, environmental sciences, computers, computer science, politics—it’s all about art and culture. So why do we segregate it?
Well, this is kind of a segue to my next question, which is that it’s obviously a difficult moment in higher education, and I know there has been concern from alumni and others that Duke Arts has shrunk and there’s been significant staff turnover. What are your thoughts
on bolstering confidence in the program and reinforcing its importance in the larger landscape of Duke?
I’m very excited to work with Alec Gallimore, the provost. He comes from the [University of] Michigan, which has a long history of really robust arts programming. Now, [Duke Arts] has been focused on presenting, and one of the things that is fascinating about this team is the connection between faculty and Duke Arts programming, and the way in which it’s been networked to student engagement.
I think that the president and the provost of Duke University did not hire me with their eyes closed but with intentionality. And I think we’ve got to figure out how we can have impact, how we can fit into the university and help advance the larger university initiatives, as well as understanding what it means to have an arts life as a human being, and help the student body and the faculty have that. But I think that if they were looking for somebody who is going to shrink it, then maybe I’m not the right person for that. I’m not trying to come in and say, you know, “What we’re doing is more important than everything else.” We’re working with everybody to help ensure that we’ve got a really strong program and that it supports the larger initiatives, but I see it as having a great partnership with folks across the university.
Can you talk about some of the programming that you’re looking forward to?
So, you know that I worked with orchestras for a long, long, long time—
And are a musician yourself, I believe?
Exactly, and I need a piano teacher—I mean, I’ll call out here, if anybody wants to tell me where I should find my next piano teacher. But what I loved about coming to the Kennedy Center was the fact that we had all of the arts, anything that you could imagine putting on a stage or putting into an exhibit, we did. And this really fed my soul significantly. What’s really cool, when you look at the Duke Arts programming, is the breadth and depth. If you look at that first week [of Duke Arts’ programming], it’s like the buffet table of my dreams, just because of the variety of artists and the traditional programming, along with some of the more edgy stuff. And there are a few spaces in there for me to be able to see things that are being done elsewhere by others. I’m not assum-
ing that we’re the only presenters, because we’re not—there’s a lot of other artists in the Durham–Chapel Hill area. Audiences make a huge difference to what the chemistry in the room is like, and therefore, every performance is different from city to city for an artist on tour, because it’s based on the audience. So I’m looking forward to getting to know the audience.
I think what you’re speaking to about audiences is remarkable to witness and experience here. You get energy from students and then people in Durham who really seek the arts out, and there are also just so many artists. I’m constantly surprised to find out that an artist I know and love has a North Carolina connection.
I wouldn’t just go to any university. Going to an area where the arts have a really robust character was important, you know, because you could go to any number of universities in any number of different places, but there’s something special here.
You feel it, you know it, you know—all of the different kinds of artists who are thriving in the Durham community, it’s beautiful. I’m looking forward to that.
Is there anything we didn’t touch on that you’d like to talk about?
In each meeting that I’ve had with the Duke Arts people, there’s been a real, heartfelt, genuine interest in connecting to the Durham arts community. I don’t know whether that is normal or not, but I thought it was unique, because there are places where it’s like, “Well, this is our performance, and you guys are lucky because we’re going to present that to you.”
That’s not the attitude that I have heard and felt from this team at all. It’s about “Who do we work with? How do we collaborate to make one plus one equal three or even more? How do we raise up our colleagues in this community? How do we partner with the folks at UNC, when appropriate, or other arts organizations?” It’s a very generous approach.
The collaborations and programming for American Tobacco, where they’ve said “We invite you to be the curator”—that’s very special. I did not know that before. I had all these conversations, so I was curious. The first questions I was asking were, “How do you put your programs together? How do you think about this?” Clearly, collaboration off campus and on campus is a big piece of it, and that will always make it stronger.
INDY FALL ARTS Issue
Where to See Art This Fall
Two photojournalism exhibits, a show that draws from Henry David Thoreau’s digitized herbarium, and more art to see across the Triangle this season.
BY SARAH EDWARDS sedwards@indyweek.com
CORNELL WATSON: GOD’S COUNTRY
Peel Gallery, Carrboro Through Oct. 5
This show is closing soon, but it’s not one to miss. Watson is one of North Carolina’s most gifted photojournalists—you may have spotted his award-winning work in places like The New York Times (and in The Assembly’s stories, where Watson often freelances) and other national publications. In God’s Country, Watson assembles photographs of charged scenes that he’s captured over the past decade, from Black Lives Matter protests to Trump rallies, in a powerful portfolio that asks what it means when we call the United States “God’s country.”
Watson, a preacher’s son who grew up in the church, isn’t afraid to ask the hard questions, as in his artist statement for the show, where he states: “The photographs in this exhibition form an archive of my own seeing over the past five years. They are fragments of the contradictions I’ve witnessed: how we proclaim love for our neighbor while deporting them; how we honor the poor in scripture while criminalizing the unhoused; how we speak of liberty while upholding systems that deny it.”
SOUTHERN GRAMMAR
Ella West Gallery, Durham Through Nov. 15
able,” he writes on his website. In Southern Grammar, Biggers’s arresting oil paintings are featured alongside works by fellow Texan Sam Lao, a playful multidisciplinary artist; Raleigh artist Clarence Heyward; and mixed-media artist Jō Baskerville, who is from Georgia. Together, this group exhibit “explores the legacy, evolution, and unapologetic spirit of the Black South through powerful visual storytelling.”
IN SEARCH OF THOREAU’S FLOWERS
The Gregg Museum of Art & Design, Raleigh Through Jan. 31, 2026
The title of this exhibit isn’t theoretical: the materials it works with are the actual flowers of 19th-century naturalist and writer Henry David Thoreau, who documented and preserved hundreds of plants while living at Walden Pond; plants which have miraculously made it to this century. Here, 648 specimens from Thoreau’s herbarium are digitized and recast in an immersive installation that considers the impact of climate change.
According to the exhibit website, an estimated “30 percent of plant species from Thoreau’s records have gone locally extinct, and another 35 percent are close to the same fate.” Here is a chance to experience and appreciate these lost species; this being NC State University, the exhibition is also accompanied by numerous interdisciplinary opportunities to learn about the flowers. Visit the museum website for a full list of events.
ty Libraries at UNC-Chapel Hill—which houses archives of both photographers—these two seminal bodies of work can be witnessed side by side. Wilson Library is open to the public during business hours, and Behind the Lens of America: Parallel Visions is located in the Melba Remig Saltarelli Exhibit Room and the North Carolina Collection Gallery.
EVERYTHING NOW ALL AT ONCE
The Nasher Museum of Art, Durham Through July 26, 2026
The Nasher Museum of Art turns 20 this year. Everything Now All at Once, a colorful showcase of the museum’s contemporary collection—with a title that seems to riff off the 2022 multiverse thriller, Everything Everywhere All at Once—seems a fitting tribute for the anniversary, highlighting the museum’s forward-looking approach and featuring cutting-edge artists the museum has forged relationships with, including Sherrill Roland, Sam Gilliam, and Amy Sherald. The Nasher currently has another exhibition drawn from its collection, Coming into Focus, centered on photography, on view through January 4. Both exhibits flex the power of curation and show how works of art can sharpen and transform, depending on the context they are placed in. With a permanent collection many thousands of works strong, the Nasher really does have a curatorial multiverse of sorts. Visit after October 18 and you’ll be able to enjoy the museum’s brand-new sculpture garden, too.
Everything is bigger in Texas, and in Jeremy Biggers’s series, Defiant, the Dallas artist calls on Black viewers to not be afraid to fill that or any other space: “For hundreds of years Black Americans have been asked to shrink ourselves and take up as little space as possible in an attempt to make others around us more comfort-
BEHIND THE LENS OF AMERICA: PARALLEL VISIONS
UNC’s Wilson Library, Chapel Hill
Through Apr. 30, 2026
Roland L. Freeman began his photography career after attending the 1963 March on Washington. Then in his twenties, he said he was inspired to document the “times in which I was living,” a commitment that he’s maintained ever since, chronicling the Black experience in communities all across the South. Raleigh photojournalist Burk Uzzle began his career a few years prior to Freeman’s and likewise set about capturing landmark American moments, from the midcentury into today. In this exhibit put on by Universi-
“Combustible Tear” by Jeremy Biggers IMAGE COURTESY OF ELLA WEST GALLERY
“The Ascendants XIV (She is Here)” by Wangari Mathenge
INDY FALL ARTS Issue
Ten Shows to See This Fall
This season’s shows include a performance artist reclaiming the holidays from the “claws of capitalism,” dancers navigating net sculptures, and soccer players juggling adolescence in Sarah DeLappe’s The Wolves.
BY LAUREN WINGENROTH arts@indyweek.com
THE ROYALE, KING JAMES, THE WOLVES Playmakers
PlayMakers Repertory Company, Chapel Hill Sept. 10–Oct. 26
PlayMakers Repertory Company’s fall season helps settle a timely debate. Chapel Hill is no football town—it’s a basketball and women’s soccer town. With Rajiv Joseph’s King James, about the rise of LeBron James and the culture of fandom around him, and Sarah DeLappe’s critically lauded The Wolves, an exhilarating look inside the drama of a high school girl’s soccer team, PlayMakers illuminates two of its hometown’s favorite pastimes in two riveting plays. Audiences throughout the Triangle will have a special opportunity to see King James: After a short run in Chapel Hill from September 25 through 28, PlayMakers is taking its show on the road, with stops at venues like Motorco Music Hall in Durham, Chatham Public Library, and more.
Preceding King James and The Wolves on the PlayMakers stage is yet another play about sports, though admittedly one that is less endemic to the Triangle: inspired by the life of barrier-breaking boxer Jack Johnson, The Royale by Marco Ramirez follows a boxing champion as he fights for wins both inside and outside of the ring.
RAYMONDA VARIATIONS
Carolina Ballet
Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh Sept. 11-28
George Balanchine may be best known for his forward-thinking, often tutu-less ballets that forged a new style of American ballet. But the pioneering choreographer still made plenty of ballets that feel more nostalgic than subversive (think: ballet with a capital “B”), and his Raymonda Variations is among the best of them. With a soaring, playful score by Alexander Glazunov, Raymonda Variations is classical ballet at its simplest and most delightful, its nine titular variations in turns tender and thrilling.
Carolina Ballet will tackle the Balanchine classic as part of an ambitious mixed bill, also including artistic director Zalman Raffael’s Book of Contradictions, resident choreographer Amy Hall Garner’s Enrapture, and a world premiere by Ted Seymour.
BLOOD EARTH WATER
UNC Process Series
Black Box Theatre in Swain Hall, Chapel Hill Sept. 19-20
Witnessing a work that’s still in process is like getting a peek behind the curtain. You might leave with a deeper understanding of an artist’s intentions, or glimpse a brilliant moment that eventually ends up on the cutting-room floor, or enjoy a more intimate connection to the work and its maker.
That’s the idea behind UNC’s Process Series, which stages professional presentations of works in progress. The first performance of its season sounds like a particularly rich one for a deeper dive: Aviva Neff’s Blood Earth Water, a solo performance exploring the author’s complex experience of being Black and mixed-race in America through ethnographic research, history, physical theater, and autobiography.
DAMBUDZO
Duke Arts Presents
The Fruit, Durham Oct. 2-4
Multihyphenate artist nora chipaumire describes her Dambudzo as an “anti-genre” work. If you’ve never heard that term before, you’re not alone. But the moment you step into one of the expansive worlds chipaumire creates in her intense and enigmatic performances, you’ll understand exactly what she means.
Blending sculpture, sound installation, dance, painting, and more, chipaumire’s immersive Dambudzo (meaning “trouble” in Shona, which is spoken in chipaumire’s native Zimbabwe) confronts legacies of colonialism through a Zimbabwean shabini, described as “an informal bar set up in private homes where citizens gather to evoke the possibilities of resistance and insurrection in the face of political powers.”
Raymonda Variations performed by Carolina Ballet PHOTO COURTESY OF CAROLINA BALLET
Aviva Neff of Blood Earth Water PHOTO COURTESY OF UNC PROCESS SERIES
NC State Live
Stewart Theatre, Raleigh
Oct. 10-11
The title of choreographer Rebecca Lazier’s latest work, a collaboration with sculptor Janet Echelman, is Latin for “be not afraid.” Though the directive probably refers more to the existential challenges of our world, there is indeed more to fear here (and on the other hand, more to be awed by) than at your average dance performance: the dancing takes place on two of Echelman’s stunning, dynamic net sculptures, suspended 25 feet in the air.
Those sculptures, and the precarious and thrilling ways the dancers navigate them, are meant to represent the fragility and interconnectedness of our lives. In addition to being a dance performance, a sculpture installation, and a feat of engineering, NOLI TIMERE may also be a lesson in survival.
BURNOUT PARADISE
Carolina Performing Arts
Joan H. Gillings ArtSpace at CURRENT, Chapel Hill Oct. 28-29
Fans of that OK Go music video, this one’s for you. In Burnout Paradise, an interactive performance by experimental Australian theater company Pony Cam, four performers must complete a series of tasks—make a meal, do some paperwork, attempt self-care—all while running (and, of course, dancing) on four treadmills.
The metaphor for modern life may be obvious, but that doesn’t make it any less prescient. And as the Pony Cam artists grapple with their own relationships to burnout and make difficult choices about what to prioritize within the ridiculous game they’ve created, they find both levity and profundity in the messy piles of to-do lists that comprise being human today.
ONCE ON THIS ISLAND
Theatre Raleigh
Arts Center, Raleigh Nov. 12-23
Mid-November sounds like a good time to be transported to a Caribbean island. Rather than heading to RDU, navigate to Theatre Raleigh, where the company will take on Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty’s magical and beloved musical, Once on This Island
Based on the book My Love, My Love by Rosa Guy (which itself is based on The Little Mermaid), Once on This Island follows peasant girl Ti Moune and rich boy Daniel, who fall in love despite the stark class divisions of their island. Don’t worry: things end (slightly) better than they did for those other star-crossed lovers, and there’s lots of enchanting Caribbean melodies, charismatic gods, and contagiously joyful dancing along the way.
THE THANKSGIVING PLAY
The Justice Theater Project
Church of the Nativity, Raleigh Nov. 14-23
If you’ve had the cringeworthy experience of recalling (or seeing photos of) the historically inaccurate Thanksgiving pageants you participated in as a child, allow The Thanksgiving Play to give you a different reason to cringe (at least now you’ll also be suppressing giggles). Written by Native American playwright Larissa FastHorse and fresh off a 2023 Broadway run, The Thanksgiving Play pokes fun at performative wokeness by following a few well-intentioned teachers as they try to create a Thanksgiving play of their own. You guessed it: things go horribly wrong. Raleigh troupe The Justice Theater Project will put on the well-timed production, which is as hilarious as it is brutally biting.
TAYLOR MAC’S HOLIDAY SAUCE
Duke Arts Presents
Reynolds Industries Theater, Durham Dec. 4-6
If your holiday viewing appetite is typically filled by The Nutcracker, A Christmas Carol, and the Hallmark Channel, gird your loins. Taylor Mac, the performance artist best known for the marathon durational work A 24-Decade History of Popular Music, has a different kind of December tradition with Holiday Sauce, a work dedicated to the memory of the Pulitzer Prize finalist’s drag mother, Mother Flawless Sabrina.
Full of Mac’s equally gorgeous and irreverent interpretations of the songs you love and love to hate (plus some clever originals), Holiday Sauce reclaims the holidays from the claws of capitalism and gives them a hearty injection of absurdity and fabulousness.
AAKASH ODEDRA COMPANY’S SAMSARA Carolina Performing Arts
Memorial Hall, Chapel Hill
Dec. 6
Fusing styles and cultures is nothing new for choreographer Aakash Odedra, who often employs his training in kathak, bharatanatyam, and Bollywood in his work for his UK-based contemporary dance company. In Samsara, the cross-genre, cross-cultural connections go even further, as Odedra collaborates with (and usually, dances with) Chinese choreographer Hu Shenyuan, who brings his own traditions and stylistic leanings to the piece.
Han Taiwanese dancer Po-Nien Wang will dance Hu’s part when the work, which is based on the Chinese novel Journey to the West, tours to Chapel Hill. In it, the two dancers channel Buddhist philosophy, Chinese mythology, and their own personal histories into an exploration of samsara (meaning the wheel of birth, existence, and rebirth), all through gorgeous, mesmerizing dancing. W
INDY FALL ARTS Issue
Elements of Style
Traditional sign painter Joseph Giampino’s brush seems to have touched every business in Raleigh, from hair salons to breweries and parking garages to city parks.
BY NICK MCGREGOR arts@indyweek.com
Joseph Giampino can’t find any emerald-green paint. Half-pint cans of 1 Shot lettering enamel paint are stacked in every corner of his Maywood Road studio, bursting at the seams alongside tool cabinets, specialty brushes, graffitied walls, old signs, and a dizzying array of other physical media.
“It’s organized chaos,” Giampino tells the INDY on a recent Thursday morning. “It looks like a mess, but I know where everything is. Certain things never leave their spot.”
Sifting first through stacks of rare photo books before showing off a restored bubblegum machine inlaid with 23-carat gold leaf, the 47-year-old Raleigh sign painter takes his time pursuing that day’s shade: color code 142-L on the 1 Shot spectrum.
“It’s a green I’ve already done,” he says—the Bend Bar in Boylan Heights needs a replacement glass door repainted. “So if I don’t find it on the first pass, it might be in my box. Or over there. I’m not worried.”
Surrounded by towers of cassette tapes, Japanese anime
novels, Philadelphia sports ephemera, old boxing gloves, freshly screen-printed T-shirts, and other tools of his trade, Giampino is right at home. The chockablock collection has grown since 2015, when his friends at Trophy Brewing Company bought the Maywood Road location for their brewery and taproom and gave Giampino carte blanche to take over an auxiliary building.
At first, he thought it’d be a good space to store the equipment he used as a working DJ. But after 10 years on that full-time grind, Giampino had grown sick of the grueling hours. His wife, Gina, encouraged him to combine his artistic urges—hip-hop, graffiti, street photography, and magazine design (he published Oak City Hustle for two years)—with his BFA from UNC Greensboro and chase a new creative pursuit.
Reading up on sign painting, he became obsessed: “I bought every single book I could find, every single paintbrush I could afford, all the paint. And I sat in front of an easel and drew and painted, and drew and painted.”
His first attempts at lettering came courtesy of Micky Slicks, a charismatic buddy whose “Micky-isms” gave Giampino plenty of wordplay to work with. Another friend, Raleigh goldsmith Lauren Ramirez, asked him to paint a sign for her new studio. Chris Powers at Trophy Brewing set him loose to decorate their rapidly growing mini-empire.
Giampino was hooked: He was setting his own schedule for the first time in a decade and working outside, immersed in the built environment, something he had obsessed over for years as a diehard skateboarder. And he was plying a hands-on trade rooted in hundreds—even thousands—of years of commercial tradition.
“I learned the rules before I broke the rules,” he says. “I learned by messing up, just like in skateboarding, where to hop off a set of stairs, you have to fall 10 times before you make it. When I started painting, I said, ‘My God, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.’ But you figure it out.”
Only nine years after embarking as a novice on that sign-painting journey, Giampino’s work, under the SPCL Signs moniker (a transmogrification of his DJ name, SPCL GST), is splashed across more than 1,500 businesses in and around Raleigh. Dive bars, coffee shops, pretzel joints, yoga studios, tattoo parlors, corner markets—you name it, Giampino has painted it.
“A lot of artists I know are naturally talented,” he says. “I didn’t have that when I started out. But I was willing to work harder than anybody to compensate for it. That’s always been the mentality of my life: you’re gonna fail, but you gotta challenge yourself to the fullest.”
That determination has fueled Giampino’s prolific work. He’s done murals for Dreamville Fest and restored old Coca-Cola, 7-Up, and Pine State Creamery signs. He’s painted parking garages for mixed-use developments, corrugated signs for regenerative farms, subtle signage for hair salons, and inspirational messages for city parks. He prefers to work with up-and-coming independent businesses that exude their own sense of singular style. But he’s also down to do big jobs for the major developers changing the skyline of the Oak City.
Giampino moved from his native northern New Jersey to Greensboro for high school, followed by college; after bouncing between New York City and Philadelphia, he moved back South, calling Raleigh home since 2010.
“I love it here. To me, Raleigh feels quiet in a good way. I know how to talk to people. When they see me, they know who I am,” he says. “I have a face—I’m not just a persona behind the screen. I’m involved in every part of the process: shaking the client’s hand when they hire me, making the patterns, chasing down the paint, looking them in the eye when the job is done, and calling it a day. There’s a little bit of me in every sign.”
But since he wears his heart on his sleeve (and skin— countless tattoos pay tribute to, among other things, his family, creativity, and his lifelong love of Philly sports),
Joseph Giampino practices lettering in his studio in Raleigh
PHOTO BY MATT RAMEY
Giampino knows he has to rein himself in sometimes.
“I’m a knucklehead,” he says. “I have a chip on my shoulder and a bullshit meter to the max. But that’s just where I grew up, in a blue-collar Italian Irish neighborhood—if you tried to hide what you felt, you’d get walked all over. So I’ve had to humble myself.”
Humility is a must in this day and age, when AI can churn out artistic creations and one-click vinyl sign printing proliferates across the internet with pitches like “Order today, ship tomorrow!” and “Big, bold, and fade-resistant!” Those signs can be affordable, but they typically only last a year or two, especially in the North Carolina sun, before needing to be replaced.
Hand-painted signs, by contrast, can easily last for decades. But finding a traditional painter isn’t exactly easy; according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 206,000 artists identify as “painters,” with fewer than 1,000 classified as “sign painters.” Hard numbers are nearly impossible to come by—a career website uses the questionably accurate number of 536, while Giampino says he only knows of four or five currently working in North Carolina.
That wasn’t always the case; sign painting boomed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when businesses across small-town USA advertised their wares on building exteriors. The trade appears in accounts of the guild-based economy of medieval Europe and even in ancient Rome, where outdoor signage for shops followed the footpaths that sprouted as the empire expanded.
Reinforcing his belief in himself as more of a working tradesman than a fine artist, Giampino mentions a passage in one of the earliest textbooks on sign painting, James Callingham’s 1890 book Sign Writing and Gloss Embossing: “A baker who makes a shapeless loaf of bread has the satisfaction of knowing that it will soon be consumed; but the work of the sign-writer is, for the most part, exposed so long to the public view, that it is worth an effort to make the letters carefully, so that employer and employed may be satisfied, and the eye not offended with the work of the hand.” Somehow, Giampino can easily expound on such histories while still preparing for his job at the Bend. He follows a detailed step-by-step process that, he says, might not be written down anywhere but is permanently etched into his brain.
First, he warms up by drawing slanted, casual letters. Next, he “does a pattern,” tracing the designs for a project onto contact paper. Then, he uses a pounce machine— essentially, an electrified heat stick—to burn tiny holes in the paper. Next, he gathers his equipment.
A mahlstick—a brace with a soft, padded head that supports a painter’s arm and keeps their hands out of the paint—and a level are a must. At least five different metal toolboxes (one emblazoned with “HAVE BRUSH WILL TRAVEL!”) contain a dizzying array of brushes, mineral spirits, filters, and other hyperspecific tools. A rugged plastic Husky case contains tape, pounce chalk, tarps, and paint rollers. A Timbuktu bag—exactly 30 years old, Giampino notes, purchased in August 1995 before his first day at Guilford Tech Community College—contains drop cloths, numerous rolls of paper towels, and coveralls for cold days.
“Everything has a purpose,” he says. “The most challenging thing is understanding your tools. If you don’t know how to use your tools, then you can’t succeed.”
He double-checks each tool he needs for today’s job. Folding ladders line the back of his Toyota Tacoma. But still, the
paint: “I know it’s here somewhere,” he says, returning inside. He zeroes in on a cardboard box stacked precariously against the doorframe and pulls out a can—142-L, emerald green. “I knew I’d find it,” he says.
The lunch pail, the tool boxes, the paint-splattered clothes, the pickup truck—it hearkens back more to an old mechanic’s garage than an artist’s studio. “I’m a blue-collar craftsman who went to art school,” Giampino says. “I’ve been in art shows, but I don’t consider myself an artist. My brushes are my wrenches.”
Rapid-fire, he delivers an insider’s array of sign-painting lingo. Fitches are outdoor wall brushes Giampino buys in bulk and then breaks in half. (“They’re too long for me,” he jokes.) A box of gold-leaf supplies contains gilder tips, squirrel-hair brushes, loose leaf, and patterned gold that runs thousands of dollars a sheet, different supplies for Boston gild and Chicago gild techniques. “My brain works very fast,” he says. “ADHD can be a flaw—I have peaks and valleys. You gotta learn balance.”
Once he prepares to paint, however, he enters a flow state. He cleans today’s canvas—the new glass door at the Bend Bar—with glass cleaner. He measures and, with a water-soluble Stabilo grease pencil, marks the spot for taping up a pattern. He levels and chalks it before returning to the tailgate of his Tacoma to prep a paint station. With the emerald-green paint in hand, he mixes, thins, and meticulously removes “crumbs” with a fine mesh strainer. He steps on the lid to reseal the paint and dips the tip of his fresh brush with neat’s-foot oil, a nondrying concoction typically used on horse saddles. Once paint meets glass, Giampino ticks off another list of techniques. He spin-dries his brush between both hands to remove excess moisture, then “pallets,” “swings,” “snaps,” and “chisels” it, depending on the thickness of each letter and the required control of each stroke. Muscle memory glides him through straight, concise letters, while he saves the curves of “S” and “2” and “5” for later.
His hands steady, his lines sharp, his voice drops: “My brain is quiet now. I’m stupid fast-paced, which is why I like painting so much—it forces me to slow down.”
After an hour or so, the work is almost done. Giampino peels back his tape, wipes away a few stray marks, and says, “One more thing.” Grabbing the grease pencil tucked into his hat, he scrawls the word “HOURS” in freehand, applying this final touch in a streetwise script that’s looser—jazzier, even—than the numbers. Stepping back, he’s satisfied: “Now, this is done.”
Of course, as with most occupations, the work never ends. After packing up, he uses a Theragun on his left elbow, which, flexed rigidly for hours, suffers from a form of golfer’s elbow. After returning to the studio, he sends invoices, chases payments, calls prospective clients, and haggles over logistics for upcoming jobs at Dorothea Dix Park and Transfer Company.
Giampino’s inner skeptic also pipes back up once the Zenlike act of painting is over. He admits to a lifelong sense of impostor syndrome—“People are constantly floating your boat, even if deep down inside, you just don’t feel like you’re that good”—and acknowledges the ongoing difficulty of business matters, the likelihood that AI will encroach on his work, and the inevitabilities of an aging body.
But he’s also proud of one thing in particular: that most of his paintings will still be there three, maybe even four decades from now—far longer than the one or two years that a vinyl sign might last. Whether running his fingers along the edge of a freshly finished sign or driving by his 25-foot “Love Respect and Kindness” mural, it’s hard for him to hide the pride he takes in his work.
“As long as I keep a good head on my shoulders, talk to people with respect, and do the best job I can, I’m going to be A-OK,” he says. “I might fail today, but my daughter also might walk around Raleigh one day long after I’m gone and be like, ‘My dad painted that sign 30 years ago.’ How cool and romantic is that?” W
Joseph Giampino PHOTO BY MATT RAMEY
CAT'S CRADLE
AUGUST
9/18 TH: BONNY LIGHT HORSEMAN W/ ANGELA AUTUMN
9/19 FR: MICO W/ VAULTBOY
9/20 SA: JOHN CRAIGIE W/ CHRISTINA VANE
9/21 SU: MARSHALL CRENSHAW 40 YEARS OF SHOWBIZ (BAND SHOW) W/ JAMES MASTRO
9/23 TU: BROOKS NIELSEN (OF THE GROWLERS)
9/24 WE: TUNE-YARDS W/ TRE. CHARLES
9/25 TH: ANDMOREAGAIN PRESENTS: TWRP W/ LOS ANGELES POWER DISCO
9/26 FR: MOLLY TUTTLE W/ JOSHUA, RAY WALKER, SOLD OUT CECELIA CASTLEMAN
9/27 SA: THE BASEBALL PROJECT W/ THE MINUS 5
9/28 SU: CARRBORO MUSIC FESTIVAL (FREE SHOW)
9/29 MO: SHARON VAN ETTEN & THE ATTACHMENT THEORY W/ TORRES OCTOBER
10/3 FR: PENELOPE ROAD
10/5 SU: ARCY DRIVE W/ FOXTIDE
10/6 MO: PETEY USA W/ ALEX CAMERON
10/7 TU: MIPSO SOLD OUT
10/8 WE: MIPSO SOLD OUT
10/9 TH: MIPSO (2 SHOWS) SOLD OUT
10/10 FR: LINCOLN THEATRE PRESENTS: AMERICAN AQUARIUM
10/12 SU: ETHAN REGAN W/ THE MAN THE MYTH THE MEATSLAB
10/13 WE: SIR CHLOE W/ SUZY CLUE
10/14 TU: ANAMANAGUCHI W/ BE YOUR OWN PET AND PULSES
10/15 WE: DESTROYER: DAN’S BOOGIE TOUR W/ JENNIFER CASTLE
10/16 TH: SAM BURCHFIELD & THE SCOUNDRELS W/ PHILIP BOWEN
10/17 FR: WINYAH W/ TOBACCO ROAD (MOVED FROM CAT’S CRADLE BACK ROOM)
10/18 SA: INFINITY SONG WORLD TOUR II
10/20 MO: GARY NUMAN SOLD OUT
10/21 TU: XANA W/ SIENA LIGGINS (MOVED FROM LOCAL 506)
10/23 TH: RUSTON KELLY W/ SAM MCPHERSON
10/24 FR: ANDMOREAGAIN PRESENTS: MOLLY GRACE W/ MEG SMITH
10/25 SA: JUKEBOX THE GHOST W/ BOYS GO TO JUPITER
10/26 SU: NATION OF LANGUAGE W/ DEEPER
10/28 TU: SUN ROOM W/ THE BENDS
10/31 FR: SAXSQUATCH
11/4 TU: BEACH FOSSILS W/ BEING DEAD
11/5 WE: VINCENT LIMA W/ CHANCE EMERSON
11/6 TH: FRENCH POLICE W/ SOCIAL ORDER
11/7 FR: AJ LEE & BLUE SUMMIT + EAST NASH GRASS
11/8 SA: LEITH ROSS
11/10 MO: GEESE W/ DOVE ELLIS SOLD OUT 11/11 TU: THE STEEL WHEELS
11/12 WE: ANDMOREAGAIN PRESENTS: VANDELUX
11/13 TH: BEAUTY SCHOOL DROPOUT
11/14 & 11/15 (FR/SA:) WATCHHOUSE (ON SALE FR 9/19)
11/21 FR: CARBON LEAF
11/29 SA: CRAZY CHESTER (LAST WALTZ TRIBUTE)
DECEMBER
12/4 TH: WILLIS W/ HOTEL FICTION
12/12 FR: EILEN JEWELL + AMANDA ANNE PLATT & THE HONEYCUTTERS
FEBRUARY
2/10 TU: ELECTRIC GUEST
2/21 SA: PETER MCPOLAND
2/28 SA: MICHAEL SHANNON & JASON NARDUCY AND FRIENDS PLAY R.E.M.’S LIFES RICH PAGEANT (ON SALE 9/19)
APRIL
4/18 SA: ELIZA MCLAMB CAT'S CRADLE BACK ROOM
SEPTEMBER
9/17 WE: JACK VAN CLEAF W/ JOELTON MAYFIELD
9/19 FR: HONEYCUTT ROAD, THE CAROLINA JUNEBUGS, MURPHY CAMPBELL
9/20 SA: JESSE FOX W/ MUNSEY, DRUNK EX 9/21 SU: LAST DATE W/ FORT KNOX, JACKSON SLATER
9/22 MO: BOYSCOTT W/ ANOTHER MICHAEL
9/23 TU: MARIS X CAROLINE KINGSBURY
9/24 WE: WATER FROM YOUR EYES W/ HER NEW KNIFE
[9/25 TH: CANCELLED ALMOST MONDAY ]
9/26 FR: CIGARETTES @ SUNSET, HIGH JUNE, YESTERDAY’S CLOTHES
9/27 SA: CARRBORO MUSIC FESTIVAL KICKOFF SHOW: DUCK AND WHOOP (FREE SHOW!)
9/28 SU: CARRBORO MUSIC FESTIVAL HIP HOP SHOWCASE (2 PM -10 PM)
9/29 MO: ZINADELPHIA OCTOBER
10/1 WE: JENNY OWEN YOUNGS W/ LOUISA STANCIOFF
10/3 FR: TRASH PANDA W/ THE OCHO
10/5 SU:
10/9 TH: SMOKEDOPE2016 SOLD OUT
10/10 FR: SOUTH ARCADE W/ RAUE
10/11 SA: GLARE W/ CLOAKROOM, JIVEBOMB, DESTINY BOND
10/12 SU: PINKSHIFT W/ LUSTSICKPUPPY, DOFLAME
10/13 MO: STACEY RYAN W/ HAVEN MADISON, THE COLLARBONES
10/14 TU: RATTLESNAKE MILK
10/15 WE: THE RUNAROUNDS –THE MINIVAN TOUR W/ WILLIAM WILD
10/16 TH: THE CRITICALS W/ NEW TRANSLATIONS
10/17 FR: WINYAH W/ TOBACCO ROAD
10/18 SA: ANDMOREAGAIN PRESENTS: CAFUNÉ W/ CRUSHED
10/19 SU: THE LEGENDARY PINK DOTS
10/21 TU: BILLY RAFFOUL W/ THEO KANDEL
10/23 TH: ANDMOREAGAIN PRESENTS: CONFETTI
10/24 FR: HARF W/ ELIAS HIX
10/25 SA: WINTER W/ HUBBLE
10/26 SU: DR BACON W/ ANDR
10/27 MO: ANDMOREAGAIN PRESENTS: THE JINS
10/28 TU: DON DIXON
10/29 WE: KITTY CRAFT W/ AFTER NOVEMBER
11/4 TU: LAYTO W/ KODE
11/5 WE: MADILYN MEI W/ AMELIA DAY
11/6 TH: NOELINE HOFMANN
11/7 FR: WEST 22ND
11/8 SA: CHEZILE SOLD OUT
11/9 SU: LAMONT LANDERS
11/10 MO: THE BRUDI BROTHERS
11/ 11 TU: POST ANIMAL SOLD OUT
11/12 WE: MARIELLE KRAFT
11/13 TH: NIGHT CAP
11/14 FR: BABY BUGS W/ ABIGAIL OSBORNE
11/15 SA: SAINTSENECA W/ RADIATOR HOSPITAL (SOLO)
11/21 FR: CAYLEE HAMMACK
11/24 MO: SYDNEY ROSE W/ EMMA ANDERSEN, NOAH LEVINE
DECEMBER
12/3 WE: RYAN DAVIS + THE ROADHOUSE BAND W/ ARBOR LABOR UNION
12/13 SA: MAGNOLIA & JOHNSON ELECTRIC CO.
11/1
INDY FALL ARTS Issue
Memory Palaces
Two current exhibitions, Potluck and Portraits and (biān) / (bǐ àn) use photography to weave family, food, and memory together.
BY COLONY LITTLE arts@indyweek.com
As a child, every visit to my Grandmother Velvia’s home included a deep dive into her trove of family photographs.
I’d open a brown wooden cabinet with an iron handle attached and pull out dozens of photo albums, an action that would prompt a bevy of stories from my father, aunties, and cousins, in which there were always discoveries and tiny slivers of insight into family lore. These images from my grandmother’s visual archive, and stories attached to them, are cherished memories of her home that I hold dear.
Two current exhibitions in Raleigh and Durham, Potluck and Portraits and (biān) / (bǐ àn), present tender offerings of love and gathering: one rooted in vernacular photography, the other in portrait photography, each presenting powerful meditations on memory that ask us to pause and reflect on our own familial journeys and how we continue to forge new bonds under the shelter of community.
JAMAICA GILMER: POTLUCK AND PORTRAITS
206 N. Dillard Street, Durham Through Sept. 30
Photographer Jamaica Gilmer presents a series of largescale portraits of women creating cherished bonds, breaking bread, and engaging in thoughtful storytelling in this pop-up exhibition on view through September 30. Gilmer’s subjects are Black women and women of color, whom she brought together to photograph in gatherings that revolve around a shared meal.
The exhibition is located in a renovated mixed-use office building originally built in the early 1900s. Over the years, the site was a single-family home, an apartment building, and the Durham Crisis Response Center. In the foyer of the Neoclassical Revival building, visitors are greeted by a grand staircase with text printed on each riser that reads: “and yet, we are still here.”
The show is Gilmer’s homage to her great-grand-
mother, affectionately known as MaSadie, and decorative elements throughout the space evoke the feeling of her home, from the large wooden buffet table standing at the entrance, to candy dishes filled with strawberry, butterscotch and peppermint treats, to vintage cameras that nod to the matrilineal practice of image making that sparked Gilmer’s foray into photography, to the fine china that she inherited from MaSadie.
Throughout the exhibit, portraits and objects are combined to conjure the safety, comfort, and restorative power of a mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother’s love.
“They always knew how to provide relief with recognition and a plate,” says Gilmer.
The exhibition of photographs, ephemera, and film footage is part of a larger series of gatherings that Gilmer, the former director and original founder of the Durham based Black-women arts collective, The Beautiful Project, created in response to her own growing sense of artistic agita.
“I had all this nervous energy that can make an artist feel really sad and scared,” she says. “I realized over time that with this nervous energy, there’s good stuff in there, I just needed a container.”
Potluck and Portraits was born out of this nervous energy.
“I call it my forever series,” she says. Gilmer holds gatherings that are called “episodes,” where the artist brings together a dozen women; each guest brings a favorite dish or a cherished memento that provides comfort and joy. Gilmer photographs them as they forgo small talk and delve deeply into an earnest dialogue guided by prompts
Left: An image of the Potluck and Portraits exhibit PHOTO BY JAMAICA GILMER Right: “Home is a feeling I carry” by huiyin zhou IMAGE COURTESY OF THE ARTIST
on rest, joy, healing, and care.
Throughout the show, a series of large black and white portraits from her first gathering, “episode one,” are featured in a room adorned with blue damask wallpaper. One of Gilmer’s prompts is printed on a window screen in the room: “What makes you feel hopeful?” Visitors are encouraged to record their responses while reading some of the responses that portrait subjects shared. Across the foyer, another room filled with color portraits taken during Gilmer’s second episode features subjects surrounded by a lush green landscape that almost beckons a deep breath. In this room, Gilmer asks, “How do you show up in the world as a healer?” One answer to this question came from Gilmer herself.
“This was a center for women who experienced domestic violence,” Gilmer says of the house the exhibit is located in. “When we were done with the installation, I walked this whole floor and prayed; I thanked them and the women who crossed this threshold. I felt my mother, my great-grandmother, and my grandmother saying, ‘and yet we are still here, you are ok.’”
Gilmer is currently planning the next presentation of Potluck and Portraits, “episode three,” featuring members of the African American Quilt Circle of Durham (AAQC). Gilmer’s photography is also featured in a reissue of Debora Willis’s groundbreaking, canonical anthology of Black photographers, Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers 1840 to the Present.
“To be looked at is a risk, and also, to be looked at and photographed is another layer of trust. In that way, photography for us is a relational act of care.”
show’s title: “for those of us who live at the shoreline.”
Throughout the exhibition, framed photographs depicting bodies of water float from the gallery walls, detached from their frames and mats, reflecting a sense of temporality and impermanence. Here, the scale of the space and the small photographs create a radical juxtaposition: Images are oftentimes abstracted, yet manage to convey deeply introspective moments through the artist’s textual reflections that frames the images.
In one piece, “tiny garden, from waipo’s hands” (2025), zhou offers a partial glimpse of a photograph of zhou’s grandmother tending to herbs. Her arm is the only part of her revealed through the frayed edges of a torn hole in the veil of rice paper that covers the image. Written on the paper’s surface, zhou muses on the relationship with their grandmother:“I once read that to love someone is to attend to a thousand births of a person.”
Through the images zhou and Dudu share, we see an unfolding of their being as they unpack their family legacies while also constructing powerful bonds within the community and the CAO collective. Two walls of images feature the artists together, and in one pair of photographs, zhou points their camera toward an image of Dudu in a photographic tête-à-tête that highlights their artistic bond.
“To be looked at is a risk,” Dudu says, “and also, to be looked at and photographed is another layer of trust. In that way, photography for us is a relational act of care.”
HUIYIN ZHOU AND LAURA DUDU: (BIĀN) / (BǏ ÀN)
Artspace, Raleigh Through Sept. 28
Artists huiyin zhou and Laura Dudu, co-directors of the Chinese Artists and Organizers Coalition (CAO), a global, volunteer-based organization serving Chinese and Sinophone communities, recently mounted an exhibition at Artspace in Raleigh.
Titled (biān) / (bǐ àn), the late-summer exhibition features photography and prose that foregrounds familial history and the evolution of identity. Dudu, based in Durham and zhou currently living in Los Angeles, are both interdisciplinary artists who present their respective works in film, photography, and text to engage in an artistic dialogue on their respective journeys of “becoming.”
With work rooted in queer feminist activism and mutual aid organizing, the artistic collaborators have presented dozens of workshops, performances, and artistic interventions over the last three years that build community and create space for personal, intimate expressions of healing and survival.
“We wanted to explore our family histories,” says zhou. “We’re also exploring the kinship we have between us and how that also channels into our work with our families. Laura and I were thinking about how we can braid these shared themes of kinship, memory, and healing.”
The opening of (biān) / (bǐ àn) introduces viewers to the work with the opening line of the poem, “Litany for Survival by Audre Lorde,” which is printed under the
Throughout the exhibition, zhou incorporated objects from their home, including rugs and comfortable chairs, providing space for viewers to sit and reflect on the work. The pair also provide a series of books, zines, and literature in a small pocket library in the exhibition that further contextualizes the show’s themes around solidarity and community.
“Kinship building is something I’m deeply invested in and engaged with through my personal work and collaboratively,” says Dudu. “It’s generative and unfolds in different formats: sometimes it’s through a collaboration with another person and the scale of intimacy expands into a three-person collective, while other times it’s 127 people punching sticky rice together.”
In programming that concludes the exhibition on September 28th, the CAO collective will host “Ciba Punch” at Dix Park, a participatory performance rooted in “queer feminist ethics of care”. The collective invites community members to punch steamed sticky rice into rice cakes in a gesture that harnesses the power of food to connect, sustain, and bring diverse communities together. The duo will bring the Ciba Punch to New York in December, and recently received a Snapdragon grant for a project called One Thousand and One Nights: A Queer Journey of Dreams and Diaspora, a social practice intervention that involves recording, collecting, and archiving 1,001 dreams and bedtime stories.
Both of these photographic presentations—Potlucks and Portraits as well as (biān) / (bǐ àn) —offer the gift of space and time to reflect in distinct, yet deeply resonant ways rooted in biological and cultivated kinships.
“The world is so hard and terrifying,” says Gilmer, “what if we could just go to grandma’s house, right now, today, and feel a bit of safety and familiarity? I’ve known for a long time that my role in the world is not necessarily to provide solutions but to provide pause–the kind of relief in a moment to take a deep breath before you have to go do the thing that you’re called to do.” W
“Samantha” by Jamaica Gilmer IMAGE COURTESY OF THE ARTIST
INDY FALL ARTS Issue
Deep Waters
Durham poet Jameela F. Dallis weaves together rich imagery around grief, mollusks, and visual art in debut collection Encounters for the Living and the Dead.
BY SHELBI POLK arts@indyweek.com
When Jameela F. Dallis sat down to turn her poetry habit into a collection, the connections she found in her own work surprised her. There were cherished tributes to late friends that she’d held on to for years, work from writing workshops she’d led at the North Carolina Museum of Art, and lots and lots of oysters.
“I started thinking, ‘Why am I writing about oysters?’” Dallis told me on a recent call. “And it’s not just that I like to eat them” (though she enthusiastically does). Dallis, who holds a PhD in literature, recounts having had a moment of panic after eating a bad oyster that helped her break into artistic expression about a traumatic experience. She was already half a dozen poems into this mollusk-imagery theme. But the urgency of this metaphor, “how the oysters are a metaphor for something very beautiful that can also harbor something very bad,” helped her settle into this emerging theme.
Dallis pulls on more than a decade and a half of
poems for the collection, which is split into three parts: “Altarworks,” “Les bêtes de la mer” after an artwork by Matisse, and “Ekphrastic Encounters.” And Dallis’s inspirations are just as wide-ranging. She’s written poems for family, friends, and loves who have passed away; poems that respond to or engage with dozens of works of visual art and/or writing; and poems that trundle across the ocean floor. Sometimes, all of these things happen in the same poem.
Dallis has been an engaged member of the Durham arts and tarot scenes (among others) for decades, and this collection fulfills a promise to herself: to sell or publish a book by the end of her 40th year. Dallis placed her collection with River River Books, a new local poetry publisher, well before her deadline. INDY Week spoke to Dallis about the genesis of this collection, the way she chose her imagery, and the process of responding to changing tides in art, ecology, and society.
INDY: This is a wide-ranging collection. How did this specific set of poems emerge?
JAMEELA F. DALLIS: I wanted the collection to acknowledge where I’ve come from and where I am, and potentially where I’ll be going. Where I came from is represented in that first part, “Altarworks.” There are poems to folks who have passed on. The earliest poem, “Blue,” is in there, and “Blue” is for my friend Cora. She died by suicide, and she was really young. She was a writer, and she had a really big impact on me, that we could share this love of writing. She was a chef, and she helped me develop a palate and a way to talk about wine. There’s a lot of wine in the book. It’s kind of funny, I wasn’t expecting I was gonna answer this question in that way. When she died, she left a lot of work behind. It’s work that at some point, maybe one day, her family wants to publish, I’m not sure. But I told her, after she had passed, that I’m going to take some writing classes to try to write through, work through, this experience. I’ve revised it since I originally wrote it, but, yeah, I always said, when I get my first book, I’m not gonna forget her.
I think I didn’t expect the three sections in this collection to be as permeable as they are. I assumed poems dedicated to people, sea creatures, and ekphrastic works would each have their own section. But instead, you play with all three of these modalities in all three sections. Can you talk more about how they were divided?
The end of section one, the poem “See Me Now,” is prob-
Jameela F. Dallis PHOTO BY SASSS WORLD
ably one of the newest poems. I definitely wrote that after the book had been accepted. I went to Morocco in 2023, and there’s this moment where I’m on the roof of this hotel, Jnane Tamsna. And I was crying there because I was so overcome with this emotion of being in this space. And I was just thinking, “Oh my God. If my ancestors, who were forced from their homes and villages in West Africa, could see me now.” I knew that I had to write a poem about that. And then I was thinking about other places I had been and felt that way.
One was Gadsden’s Wharf in South Carolina, where so many ships carrying enslaved people docked. I remember feeling overcome with emotion when I stood there. These were moments that were definitely separated by time but brought me together. I was thinking, “How can I connect these through water, through the ocean?” And I was like, oysters. I’ve eaten oysters in so many different places. Every time I eat an oyster, I ask where it’s from and think about the course that it took to get to my platter. It made sense as a transition poem to move from thinking about folks who have passed on, then transitioning into the ocean through the image of me eating all these oysters.
It’s not that every poem has an oyster in it. Every poem has to do with some sort of beast of the sea, be it a little shrimp or a big old monster spider crab. And then that last part, I think that they’re more like—I don’t want to say portraits, but those last poems are almost like vignettes. I don’t think that they hang together as closely as some of the other poems, but I think of them as snapshots, especially the poem for my dad, “I Do Not Swim nor Do I Have Manicured Grass.” That poem is an ekphrastic response to an actual photograph. I wanted that last section to feel like encounters with art. So it’s “Ekphrastic Encounters.” It’s kind of literal, but I wanted people to leave the ocean, where everything flows together, and have these moments of walking through a museum.
These are very sensory poems. You touch on most senses, but you are so interested in color, especially blue, which feels even more poignant after understanding the background of that poem and obviously ties into the ocean. Why do you think you’re so interested in color as a way to relate to things?
I think because I am a visual learner—it comes down to that. And also, I always like to say that art is my first love, and color makes me happy. I know that this is sort
of centered in seeing, and that’s part of the reason why there are other senses that I try to bring in as well. Because I know that everyone who encounters my work might not be seeing. But I feel like, in terms of how we encounter art—a lot of times the first thing people will talk about is the colors. It’s often the first way that we describe things. Thinking about kids too, when they’re learning their colors. Like a banana is yellow, and an orange is orange, that sort of thing. It breaks things down into simple parts.
I also wanted to challenge myself to get very specific with the kind of blue. Is it ultramarine? Is it cornflower? There are these nuances and differences, and those bring back their own memories with them.
I wanted people to be able to encounter different sorts of blues and be in the poem, but also to comb their own consciousness and their own memories of a kind of blue that they’ve encountered.
This connection to my friend Cora and the idea of blue is also, you know—when people are depressed, they say they’ve got the blues. That was something I was playing with there. And obviously, it has grown into a different space in the manuscript overall. I was very much thinking about blue and how it occupies so many spaces in that poem. But you know, my friend’s no longer here because she was blue.
I read that you were thinking at one point about how much oysters filter their environment. I’m wondering if you think of ekphrasis as an analogous process? Where you’re taking so much in and filtering and perhaps creating out of that?
I don’t know if I have explicitly in that way, but it makes sense to me. That’s interesting because I think the way that I approach ekphrasis is not in a literal way. It’s not like “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” But yeah, I think it is a form of filtering. You know, it’s filtering your response through your own memory, life experience, your own way of talking about and encountering art. All of that, you bring with you when you know you’re having a moment of “I want to respond to this piece.”
The whole literal thing about oysters and how much they can filter per day—it’s phenomenal. It feeds into this larger thing that I’ve been thinking about with our climate and our oceans and responsibilities that we have. When oysters get sick, we get sick. If there’s some place that is so polluted that oysters can’t live, and their whole job is to filter out these pollutants, what does that say about our environment, about our relationship to our environment?
You hear so much about different plac-
es where the water is so polluted that you can’t eat the fish you get from there. “There’s a Place without Oysters” and the one that comes after it, “There Came to Be a Place with No Oysters,” are two of the poems that surprised me the most as I was writing them and working through them, and the larger message around our responsibility.
Were you thinking in terms of ecopoetics writing this collection, or was this another one of those predilections that emerged as you were creating?
Yeah, I think the second one a little bit more so, “And There Came to Be a Place.”
The last one in that series [“I Will Not Look Away”] is for my love, Will, who passed in 2020. That last poem is [also] for St. James. Did you ever go to St James the restaurant?
Yes, yes, I did. Loved it.
OK, this is going to be kind of a wormhole. So I’ll start here. The first poem [“There’s a Place without Oysters”] is in response to this meat stall painting by Pieter Aertsen. You think it’s just a picture of a meat stall, and then you look in the back and it’s the Holy Family escaping to Egypt. But at the same time, there are little notes in the painting that are about development in the area. These developers were coming in and, I think, trying to buy up the church’s property, and there was a big controversy about it. On the NCMA site, it goes into detail about all the things that are going on in this painting, and I was like, whoa.
That third [poem] is thinking about St. James and how it becomes just another victim to development. And now, of course, it’s just sitting there empty. That is the last place that Will and I had a date, and it was one of the last times I saw him in the flesh, alive. Every time I pass by there, it’s like a memorial to the last place that we went out.
For the second one [in the series, “And There Came to Be a Place without Oysters”], I was thinking more about those old images of oyster middens, and I was thinking about history and what is beneath the middens, and the roles that middens played, especially to Indigenous populations. So that poem is a little bit more conscious of the ecopoetics. W
Dallis will be reading from the collection at her book launch party on September 21, at Delafia Wine Bar.
clarity.
INDY FALL ARTS Issue
Student Advocacy
Talking with Riverside High School teacher Bryan Christopher about immigration, education, and his new book, Stopping the Deportation Machine.
BY LENA GELLER lgeller@indyweek.com
During his first year as adviser to the Riverside High School newspaper, Bryan Christopher oversaw perhaps the biggest story the publication had ever covered: the arrest and months-long detention of a Honduran student, Wildin Acosta, who faced deportation to the country he’d fled at 16 to escape gang violence.
While some of Christopher’s journalism students documented the ordeal, others joined a groundswell of community activism that has been widely credited with securing Acosta’s release and 2016 return to Durham.
Nearly a decade after these events, it’s Christopher’s turn to document the story. Stopping the Deportation Machine, his first book, interweaves Acosta’s story with that of the four students who crusaded to bring their classmate home. Acosta was involved in the book from the start, and Christopher conducted dozens of interviews with him through
an interpreter, grounding the story in what’s at stake when federal mandates collide with public education.
Christopher also draws in his own narrative thread, emerging as a valuable proxy for readers who wonder if they’re prepared for the current moment. His learning curve—from just beginning to understand how immigration enforcement impacts students to weighing whether to break protocol for a last-minute field trip to Washington when it was the students’ only chance to lobby lawmakers—indicates that you don’t need to be an expert to take meaningful action, and that professional constraints don’t have to mean sitting on the sidelines.
The INDY spoke with Christopher about why he felt compelled to write Stopping the Deportation Machine, strategic tensions in advocacy work, and why he believes local journalism saved this story from being forgotten.
INDY: As a narrator, you’re quite self-aware, almost self-conscious, of the fact that you’re limited in your understanding of Wildin’s experience. You’re also aware of the extent to which you were involved—or not involved—in the advocacy effort around preventing his deportation. What made you decide that you wanted to tell this story despite those limitations—or perhaps because of them?
BRYAN CHRISTOPHER: When Wildin was arrested, and when students at Riverside started covering the events and advocating for his right to graduate, I started to get the sense that what was happening was really special. There were professional journalists that covered it relentlessly as it was happening. But once Wildin came back and graduated, those journalists had to move on, and the full story was never told in one singular place.
In the winter of 2018, there was a migrant caravan moving through Central America to the Southern border, and President Trump was vilifying it like he often does. The characterizations that I was reading about in the headlines were fundamentally opposed to what I had experienced as an educator in Durham Public Schools. I wanted something to challenge that narrative. I was reluctant to take it on myself because I thought the students who advocated for Wildin were the best ones to tell the story. But they had made it clear to me by then that they weren’t going to do it. They were in college, pursuing their own careers.
I reached out to Wildin to see if he’d be interested in collaborating to try to put together a more complete story of what he experienced. In the spring of 2019, we started meeting regularly.
The other part of your question, in terms of struggling with my place in the whole thing—I started writing in 2019, and then we had the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement through 2020. That was really influential on my writing process, because it kept me really keenly aware of not just the story, but also who should tell it and how. When I made the decision to tell the story, I wanted to be as clear as I could about who I was and why we were doing this.
Wildin’s arrest and detention took place under the Obama administration. It can be easy to forget that this stuff was happening before the Trump era. How do you see the continuity between what was happening then and what’s happened since Trump’s time in office?
One of the things I learned from being immersed in immigration policy is that it’s been messy for so long, and that it’s been really hard for our government to reach any kind of bipartisan common ground. Like you said, that was true before Trump’s first term. But I think the biggest thing I’ve seen change is the ability to respectfully disagree and the effort made to make a good-faith effort to at least hear an opposing side.
Wildin Acosta and Bryan Christopher PHOTO BY LAURA SALAZAR CORONADO.
President Obama’s criteria for the raids that were happening in North Carolina and through parts of the country—they were clear. And the individuals who were arrested met the criteria. But when people disagreed with it, there were people in pretty high-ranking positions that at least agreed to talk about it and to hear these kids who were advocating for his right to graduate regardless of his immigration status. I think that’s been the most pronounced shift, that it’s not about conversation and dialogue, it’s much more about—choose whatever word you want. A lot of grandstanding and a lot of really loud talk.
A driving force of the advocacy campaign was that Wildin wanted to graduate and was trying to do schoolwork that teachers were sending him in the detention centers. It was interesting to me that parts of the book characterized Wildin as being more into socializing than academics when he was at Riverside. When you were writing, did you feel a tension between the “model student” narrative used for advocacy and the more complex reality of who Wildin is?
I think effective advocacy is always strategic. These were effective advocates who knew what they were doing to best help his case. I was never super conflicted about it, because ultimately, he was a kid. The Supreme Court ruled years ago that every child has a right to a public education regardless of immigration status. People spend too much time deciding if this kid is a good kid or a bad kid—it doesn’t matter. They have a right to an education, whether they’re an A student or less than an A student. I understood certain narratives that were pushed up the chain to fight for his right to return. But I think ultimately, he was a kid, and like every kid, he had his rights, and graduating was one of them.
There’s a tension throughout the book around what would constitute crossing the line into advocacy for you as a teacher. When navigating that boundary, how much were you worried about actual consequences from the district versus working through your own sense of what a teacher should do? I’m interested in how much self-policing boxes us into smaller zones of action.
It’s something I thought about a lot. As a journalism teacher, if students were covering it, it was literally part of my job to help them do that effectively and show them best practices. So I approached it as a teach-
er of journalism first, helping student journalists the same way I would with any story. We had early conversations with students about keeping coverage and advocacy separate—if you’re covering the event, cover the event. If you’re advocating for his right to graduate, don’t also write the news stories. We tried to stay aware of best practices. As the story grew and more people took up the cause, I asked myself more questions. As a classroom teacher in a community rattled by immigration raids, there were clear academic outcomes being impacted. We saw changes in attendance. We saw it affect students’ mental health. Very visible things were happening that made my job harder—helping them build reading, writing, and communication skills. Since it was making that more difficult, I had educational ground to stand on when I started advocating for change. It didn’t feel like a big sidestep from my work.
I wasn’t someone who was super politically active. I hadn’t attended protests or done many of the things I was suddenly focused on intensely. So I thought a lot about why I was doing it and for whom. Because there were educational outcomes at stake for kids in my school and classroom, it felt tangible enough to be a cause I could get behind.
That makes sense. There’s so much in here about how hard it is to be a teacher. Seeing all the different roles teachers take on beyond educator, it makes sense that this wouldn’t feel like a drastic change when you already wear so many hats.
Yeah, and it’s important that it happened in Durham. Our community is inclusive. This scenario wouldn’t have had the same support in other places. That matters—it made my decision to get involved easier because I knew about the widespread support and how progressive and inclusive the community was before, during, and after this happened.
What else would you like to say about the book?
I always like to plug high school journalism and the importance of local journalism. I don’t think this book would’ve happened without the diligent reporting of a small group of reporters covering things as they happened in the Triangle. That was incredible source material for me to cross-check dates and events, build a timeline. I’m grateful to live in a place where we have local reporters still covering these things. That was invaluable for the writing process—they left great resources for me. W
ƒes Character
House of Mirrors
BY EVA FLOWE arts@indyweek.com
WMany of the mirrors Dillard broke to make the swirls, starbursts, and dandelion patterns that scaffold his home, spaceship sculpture, and walls came from the Scrap Exchange. The Durham institution used to give him the broken mirrors for free. When asked if he ever worries about the old superstition that a broken mirror is bad luck, he snorts and says he “hopes so.”
Pieces of ceramic plates, mug handles, and tiles are also embedded into the walls, which wave along the edge of the property, broken up by statues that were originally inspired by Easter Island, before Dillard got bored with that theme. Now there is also a queen, a joker, and a knight built into the wall.
Some of the ceramics are broken pieces from friends who make pottery. There is a full Jack Daniel’s whiskey bottle embedded in one wall, a gift from Ninth Street Bakery, where Dillard used to do repairs. The liquor has evaporated a little, but much of it is still in the wall.
A tuxedo cat—live, not a sculpture—lazes on the doormat as Dillard shows me around the property. He says the cat is called Cat. Like the “museum” guests, Cat just showed up one day, perhaps drawn by the mosaics, like everyone else. Birds have built nests in some of the halved glass bottles protruding from the wall, so Dillard has to keep Cat away from them.
Piece by piece, Gene Dillard’s mosaic-adorned home in Northgate Park has become a beloved Durham destination.
hen you Google his address, a Google Maps location pops up for “Gene Dillard’s Fantasy Land.”
But Gene Dillard didn’t come up with that name, nor did he create the Google Maps page that calls his house an art museum—he just set out to make sculptures and mosaics. Though he doesn’t mind, he also didn’t realize his sparkling, mirror-covered house would draw visitors, and he certainly didn’t expect a stranger to make it a landmark on Google Maps.
The exterior of the house is covered in mirror, ceramic, and glass bottle mosaic walls and statues. Wire sculptures dot the front yard. In the back, Dillard has built a concrete, glass, and mirror spaceship. Dillard is working on a wizard statue now, which will have an electric light coming from its hand. Other statues include Icarus, but Dillard has built the tragic figure into a better future, with a wife and son. Dillard worked as a repairman for most of his life, fixing
scientific and restaurant supplies. In the early 2000s, he had a bit of a midlife crisis and joined the Peace Corps. When he returned, he began to work on his Northgate Park house.
“I think I enjoy the repetitive motion,” Dillard says. “It’s kind of meditative, you know, I’m sitting there for hours and hours and having arguments with people that aren’t there? Yeah, I think that has a lot to do with it. I don’t know at this point.”
Dillard, now retired, has two children and two grandchildren. The back gate that his neighbors use as a shortcut to see each other without walking around the block is shaped like a self-portrait his granddaughter drew. She was catching a snowflake in her mouth.
His grandchildren helped tile some of his projects, but he does worry about children wandering around his property unattended because of all the glass.
Inside, the doorframes and ceilings are covered with colorful mosaic flowers and petals. A tinfoil ball sits in front of the fireplace, made of leftover tin from volunteer shifts at Urban Ministries of Durham. He stopped making the ball when he realized it might not fit back out the front door.
“I can’t make it any bigger or [it] won’t go out, so I don’t bring it home anymore, but eventually it’ll end up in the spaceship,” he says
The intricate decoration of his home has been well-received by his neighbors. Dillard jokes that if someone started a homeowners association, he’d have to be exempt—he can’t exactly uncement the shards that replaced his siding. People come by to see his progress regularly.
“I was about half done with that archway, and I had a dinner party, and one of the neighbors said, ‘Oh, what are you gonna do next?’ I found it really irritating,” Dillard says.
“I was sitting here and I’d had a couple beers. I said, ‘Oh, I’m gonna cut the ceiling now, put the ceiling up.’ And then I couldn’t let go of that.”
This led to his new project: cut out the ceiling, and a friend helped him Sheetrock it. Now it’s covered in red, orange, and yellow flowers. He cut each flower petal tile out of bigger pieces, painstakingly using nippers to break little pieces off.
Dillard has nippers—a tool that looks like oversized nail clippers—tattooed on his arm. Is it an homage to his mosaic house? He shrugs amicably: “Probably.”
Gene Dillard PHOTO COURTESY BY MICHAEL KOVNIKA
WED 9/17
MUSIC
Ally J on the Roof
7:30 p.m. The Durham Hotel, Durham.
Duke Arts at American Tobacco: Dior Ashley Brown
6:30 p.m. American Tobacco Campus, Durham.
Jake Kohn and Low Water Bridge Band
7 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.
Maren Morris: The Dreamsicle Tour
7 p.m. Koka Booth Amphitheatre, Cary.
Weave & Spin Performance Series and Open Mic
7 p.m. The Eno House, Hillsborough.
Jack Van Cleaf – No One’s Gonna Know if You Leave San Diego 8pm Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.
STAGE
Mad Libs Live! Sept. 12-28, various times. Raleigh Little Theatre, Raleigh.
The Royale by Marco Ramirez Sept. 10-28, various times. PlayMakers Repertory Company, Chapel HIll.
SCREEN
David Gilmour Live at the Circus Maximus, Rome in IMAX
7 p.m. Marbles IMAX, Raleigh.
THUR 9/18
MUSIC
Al Strong Presents: Jazz on the Roof
Thursdays at 7 p.m. The Durham Hotel, Durham.
An Evening with Kyshona 7:30 p.m. The Cary Theater, Cary.
Drumming Bird with Clint Bowman
7:30 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.
LaMP ft. Russ Lawton, Scott Metzger, Ray Paczkowski
8:30 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.
Bonny Light Horseman
8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.
Beware of the Fall: Mk.Ultra/ Jah Wiick/ YDN.1k/ Hazel the Great/ DJ M.Keyyz
8 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.
SCREEN
Apollo 13: 30th Anniversary in IMAX Sept. 18-20, various times. Marbles IMAX, Raleigh.
Movie Loft presents “Carny” 8 p.m. Shadowbox Studio, Durham.
FRI 9/19
MUSIC
Dave Prieto Jazz Duo with John Simonetti | NO COVER
8 p.m. The Bar(n) at Sonark Farms, Hillsborough.
Fu Manchu w/ The Magpie
7 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.
Gene Farris 9:00 PM The Fruit, Durham.
Harvey Street w/ The Band Solstice
8:30 p.m. Lincoln Theatre Raleigh.
Hayes Carll – ‘We’re Only Human’ Tour
8 p.m. Haw River Ballroom, Saxapahaw.
High + Tight: A Lifetime of Soul, Funk, and Disco Fridays at 8 p.m. Wolfe & Porter, Raleigh.
Honeycutt Road, The Carolina Junebugs, Murphy Campbell
8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.
House of Beyonce Act 5: Eras
10 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.
Lennon KC 6:30 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Raleigh.
MICO
8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro. Pops on the Green 6:30 p.m. American Tobacco Campus, Durham.
PUP & Jeff Rosenstock: A CATACLYSMIC RAPTURE OF FRIENDSHIPNESS
7:30 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh. Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 4 and Dvořák New World Symphony Sept. 19-20, 8 p.m. Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.
Southpaw Soul
6 p.m. The Glass Jug Beer Lab, RTP.
Tribute to Ray & Ella: Lillian Faith and Aaron Gross
7:30 p.m. Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.
STAGE
Blue Box Theatre Presents: Earnest
Sept. 19-27, various times. Vault Theatre Studios, Durham.
Broken Records: Musical Comedy Improv 8 p.m. Mettlesome Theater, Durham.
“Carny” screens at Shadowbox Studio on Thursday, September 18.
PHOTO COURTESY OF SHADOWBOX STUDIO
MICO performs at Cat’s Cradle on Friday, September 19.
PHOTO COURTESY OF CAT’S CRADLE
Kyshona performs at The Cary Theater on Thursday, September 18. HOTO COURTESY OF THE CARY THEATER
Eric S. Swindell: Break
Every Chain
Sept. 19-20, various times. Garner Performing Arts Center, Garner.
Paradiso 26: MC Hyland, Lightsey Darst, Sharon Kunde
7 p.m. Shadowbox Studio, Durham.
Sheng Wang
7:30 p.m. DPAC, Durham.
SAT
9/20
MUSIC
Bambara, Buck Gooter
7 p.m. Local 506, Chapel Hill.
Band on the Roof: Spencer Thomas
7 p.m. Raleigh Five Points, Raleigh.
Big Band Bash in the Park
5:30 p.m. Lake Benson Park, Garner.
The Brook & The Bluff
8 p.m. Haw River Ballroom, Saxapahaw
The Brunch Set: SingAlong Saturdays at Missy Lane’s
11 a.m. Missy Lane’s Assembly Room, Durham.
Carter Minor with Scott Sawyer
7 p.m. Succotash, Durham.
Catbite, Rodeo Boys, Flying Raccoon Suit
7 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.
Deep Jungle Disco
9 p.m. The Fruit, Durham.
Dylan Gossett - The Westward Tour
7 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.
Jesse Fox
7:30pm Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro
John Craigie, Christina Vane
8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.
Lucy Dacus
8 p.m. DPAC, Durham.
Matt Maltese: Tour For You My Whole Life w/Cornelia Murr
8 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.
MOODBOARD: Jubilee, GRRL, PlayPlay, Queen Plz
8:30 p.m. PS37, Durham.
Nailah Porter
7:30 p.m. Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.
Parker McCollum
7:30 p.m. Red Hat Amphitheater, Raleigh.
Pool Kids, Truth Club, Pony
6:30 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.
Pops on the Green
7 p.m. Southern Village, Chapel Hill.
STAGE
Asia Fest with Dragon Boat Racing
9 a.m. Koka Booth Amphitheatre, Cary.
House Party
6 p.m. Mettlesome Theater, Durham.
Pride Rewind with Stormie Daie
3 p.m. Graduate Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill.
Show & Tell and Golden Age
7:30 p.m. Mettlesome Theater, Durham.
SUN 9/21
MUSIC
The Beaches: No Hard Feelings Tour
7 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.
Cherub, Sessy, Seance 8 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.
Diles Que No Me Maten / Dead Halos
8 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.
Frankie Alexander Quartet
7:30 p.m. Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.
Last Date
7 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.
Marshall Crenshaw: 40+ Years in Showbiz
7:30pm Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.
MON
9/22
MUSIC
Bilmuri
7 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.
Boyscott
8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.
Father John Misty
8 p.m. DPAC, Durham.
The Marías: Submarine Tour
7:30 p.m. Red Hat Amphitheater, Raleigh.
MIRADOR
8 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.
TUES
9/23
MUSIC
Brooks Nielsen (of The Growlers)
7 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro. Deafheaven, Harm’s Way, I Promised the World
8 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.
Maris x Caroline Kingsbury
7 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.
Mt. Joy
7:30 p.m. Koka Booth Amphitheatre, Cary.
Six Feet Under, Exhorder, Wretched, Incite
7 p.m. Chapel of Bones, Raleigh.
Shoreline Mafia: Back In Bidness Tour
7 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh. Supermutt, Marcyline, Nicole Tester
6:30 p.m. doors, 7p.m. show. The Pinhook, Durham
PAGE
Ariana Godoy: Follow My Voice
7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.
Mallary Tenore Tarpley— SLIP: Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery
5:30 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.
Catbite performs at The Pinhook on Saturday, September 20. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE PINHOOK.
Takács Quartet performs with Jordan Bak at Baldwin Auditorium on Saturday, September 27. PHOTO COURTESY OF DUKEARTS.
WED 9/24
MUSIC
Corsano, Dorji Duo, DUNUMS
7:30 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham
Rilo Kiley with special guest The Mountain Goats
7:30 p.m. Red Hat Amphitheater, Raleigh.
Tune-Yards, Tre. Charles
7 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.
Vance Joy
6:30 p.m. Koka Booth Amphitheatre, Cary.
Water From Your Eyes
8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.
STAGE
Richard Thomas: Mark Twain Tonight!
7:30 p.m. DPAC, Durham.
PAGE
M.L. Rio: Hot Wax
Sept. 24, 7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.
THUR 9/25
MUSIC
Al Strong Presents: Jazz on the Roof
Thursdays at 7 p.m. The Durham Hotel, Durham.
Between the Buried and Me & Hail The Sun
6 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh. Denty Westlake
7 p.m. Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.
Lyle Lovett and his Acoustic Group
7:30 p.m. DPAC, Durham.
Thursday Jazz Jams
7 p.m. Missy Lane’s Assembly Room, Durham.
TWRP. The Longest Weekend 2025 Tour
8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro.
STAGE
Eiko Otake & Wen Hui: What Is War?
Sept. 25-26, various times. Rubenstein Arts Center, Durham.
SCREEN
Skin and Bones Theater presents “TURA!”
7 p.m. Shadowbox Studio, Durham.
PAGE
SenLinYu: Alchemised
7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.
M.L. Rio: Hot Wax
6 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.
FRI 9/26
MUSIC
BUBBLE POP PRIDE
DISXO: Drag and More! 10:30 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.
BunnaB Presents: The Ice Cream Girl Road Trip
8 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.
Cigarettes At Sunset, High June, Yesterday’s Clothes
8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.
Cosmic Gate
9 p.m. The Fruit, Durham.
Friday Favorites: Dvořák’s New World Symphony
12 p.m. Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh.
Jimmy Carr
7 p.m. DPAC, Durham.
Juan Alamo
7:30 p.m. Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.
Loose Cattle
6:30 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.
X Ambassadors
7 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.
SAT 9/27
MUSIC
The Baseball Project Featuring members of R.E.M. and The Dream Syndicate
8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro. The Big Gay Ass Party
10 p.m. The Fruit, Durham.
Bad Suns: Acceleratour 2025
8 p.m. Haw River Ballroom, Saxapahaw.
Danger Hall
7:30 p.m. Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.
Geoff Tate’s Operation: Mindcrime – The Final Chapter
8:30 p.m. Lincoln Theatre, Raleigh.
A Night Out With Mimi Roman
7 p.m. The Eno House, Hillsborough.
Puro Pride Pari!!
10 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.
Saturday Night Dance Party at The Velvet Hippo
9:30 p.m. The Velvet Hippo, Durham.
Takács Quartet with Jordan Bak, viola
7:30 p.m. Baldwin Auditorium, Durham.
SUN 9/28
MUSIC
Carrboro Music Festival’s Hip Hop & Grooves Showcase
2 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.
Dvořák: New World Symphony
3 p.m. Memorial Hall, Chapel Hill.
Lightning Bolt
8 p.m. Motorco Music Hall, Durham.
Live Jazz with Joseph Silvers
11 a.m. Lanza’s Cafe, Carrboro.
NXWORRIES: WHY LAWD? Tour
7 p.m. The Ritz, Raleigh.
Raphael Saadiq: No Bandwidth!
7:30 p.m. DPAC, Durham.
Sunday Jazz Brunch with Al Strong
11 a.m. Missy Lane’s Assembly Room, Durham.
Will Paquin
8 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.
MON 9/29
MUSIC
Michael Beach, Verity Den
8 p.m. the Pinhook, Durham
Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory
8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle, Carrboro. Zinadelphia
8 p.m. Cat’s Cradle Back Room, Carrboro.
SCREEN
Georgia O’Keeffe: The Brightness of Light
7 p.m. Chelsea Theater, Chapel Hill.
TUES 9/30
MUSIC
BL_ANK, Tacoma Park, Angell, Blake, Golombisky, Proctor, Sabiston
7 p.m. The Pinhook, Durham.
Elvis Costello & The Imposters with Charlie Sexton
8 p.m. DPAC, Durham.
NCJRO
7:30 p.m. Sharp 9 Gallery, Durham.
TREASVRE
7:30 p.m. Rubies on Five Points, Durham.
PAGE
Brian Recker: Hell Bent
7 p.m. Quail Ridge Books, Raleigh.
Twenty Years of Twilight
5 p.m. Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill.
CROSSWORD
RELEASE DATE—Sunday, September 14, 2025
To download a pdf of this puzzle or view its solution, visit indyweek.com/puzzles-page
Los Angeles Times Sunday Crossword Puzzle
“POSITIVELY CHARGED” BY MICHAEL TORCH & ANDREA CARLA MICHAELS
ACROSS
1 Give for free 5 Carpenter’s compressor
11 Chow
15 Fall blooms, for short
19 Olympic fencing event
20 Card carrier?
SU | DO | KU
© Puzzles by Pappocom
Difficulty level: MEDIUM
There is really only one rule to Sudoku: Fill in the game board so that the numbers 1 through 9 occur exactly once in each row, column, and 3x3 box. The numbers can appear in any order and diagonals are not considered. Your initial game board will consist of several numbers that are already placed. Those numbers cannot be changed. Your goal is to fill in the empty squares following the simple rule above.
If you’re stumped, find the answer keys for these puzzles and archives of previous puzzles (and their solutions) at indyweek.com/puzzles-page or scan this QR code for a link.
Best of luck, and have fun!
91 Army of Istanbul? 97 Avianca airlines destination 99 Swings around 100 Not fake 101 “We’re doomed!” 106 Last Stuart queen 107 Lamaze class lectures?
110 Amtrak track 111 The Jonas Brothers, e.g.
21 Yankee preceder in the NATO alphabet
22 “Gotcha”
23 Literary takeaway?
26 Sorry! or Scrabble 27 Poison remedies
28 Cut (down) 29 Carpenter’s drill
30 Vellani of “The Marvels” 31 Riches of the Vatican? 34 Spheres of influence 38 Courses 39 New Year’s 40 Soviet first lady Gorbacheva 41 Letter-shaped construction piece
43 Combed 48 Blessing over breakfast?
53 Feudal baron 54 Bronze finishers
55 JFK postings 56 Cutting edges
57 Kin of -kin
58 Zone
59 Postpone the inevitable 60 Salsa support
64 Strong affection for school auditoriums?
67 River Achilles was dipped into 68 Rubs the wrong way 70 Buck passers?
71 Lena of “Chocolat”
73 Farm machine 74 Put up, in poker 75 Past the point of no return 80 “Hasta la vista”
81 Drink to forgive and forget?
83 Retired professor’s designation
85 Gorilla expert Fossey 86 Sitcom actress Georgia
87 __-eyed
88 Oxford heads?
90 Isn’t colorfast
Edited by Patti Varol
4 Cab prefix
5 Old PC drive inserts 6 Jai alai basket
7 Weighed down 8 Boxers Muhammad and Laila 9 Storage unit, for short 10 Settle in advance
112 Appeared ominously 113 Cry for worms 114 D.C. group 115 “That remains to be __”
116 Convent superior 117 Rolls out the green carpet?
DOWN
1 “Arrested Development” star Michael 2 Tournament type 3 Spam, lamb, or ham
11 Overdramatic
12 Mermaid who sings “I wanna be where the people are” 13 Philosophy often translated as “way” 14 Thesaurus entry: Abbr. 15 Business bigwig 16 Eel in nigiri 17 Old-fashioned copier, briefly
18 Back in the navy?
24 Ready for making emends? 25 Drains, as strength
29 With ears pricked up 31 __-mutuel 32 “How’ve ya __?” 33 The Cavaliers of the NCAA
34 City near Utah Lake
35 Indignation
36 City NNW of H-Town 37 Actress Rae 38 Fistfuls of dollars 41 Accounts on the ‘gram
42 Palm with chewable nuts
43 “I need a rescue” letters 44 Gabs 45 “I’ve with you!”
46 Archrival
47 Neuter
49 “Take your pick”
50 Sweet popcorn coating 51 Ringlet, maybe 52 Nest egg funds, for short
56 Toe woe 58 Likely will, with “is”
59 “Said I Loved You But I Lied” singer Michael 60 “The Very Busy Spider” writer/ illustrator 61 Letter-shaped construction piece
62 Seeing red
63 Origami medium 65 PC connections
66 Ancient Greek region 69 Lampoons
72 Storyteller 74 V-up muscles
75 “No kidding?”
76 Kaput 77 Jigsaw puzzle starting point, often
78 Squeezed (out) 79 Chums
81 “Clan of the Cave Bear” author 82 Japanese noodle
84 Cracker Jack bonus
88 “That’s not true!” 89 “C’est magnifique!” 90 Hunters’ hideaways
91 Winter Palace rulers 92 Arm bones
93 Quarrel 94 Collapses, with “over” 95 Muppet who is fond of bubble baths
96 Climb aboard 97 Atmosphere 98 Burn-soothing plants 101 From __: one step 102 Places for napkins 103 Plant-based spread
104 Quick itinerary? 105 Baking soda amts.
107 Short change? 108 Resource in Minecraft or Catan 109 Male swan
EMPLOYMENT
Field Service Engineer
Siemens Industry, Inc. seeks a Field Service Engineer in Wendell, North Carolina to perform installation, testing, commissioning, and start-up of low voltage (LV) and medium voltage (MV) equipment. Reqs: Bach. Deg. or foreign equiv in Elect. Eng. or rel fld & 3 yrs rel exp. To apply, go to: https://jobs.siemens.com/careers?query=477323& location=USA&pid=563156131854584&domain= siemens.com&sort_by=relevance&utm_ source=j_c_us&triggerGoButton=true
Field Service Engineer
Siemens Industry, Inc. seeks a Field Service Engineer in Wendell, North Carolina to perform installation, testing, commissioning, and start-up of low voltage (LV) and medium voltage (MV) equipment, etc. Reqs: Bach. Deg. or foreign equiv in Elect. Eng. or rel fld & 3 yrs rel exp. To apply, go to: https://jobs.siemens.com/careers?query=476605& location=USA&pid=563156127151633&domain= siemens.com&sort_by=relevance&utm_ source=j_c_us
Lead Infrastructure Engineer
Lead Infrastructure Engineer, F/T at Truist Bank (Raleigh, NC) Perform problem tracking, diagnosis & root-cause analysis, replication, troubleshooting, & resolution for complex issues. Lead moderately complex projects & participate in larger, more complex initiatives. Must have Bach’s deg in Comp Sci, Comp Engg, CIS or rltd tech’l field + 5 yrs of progressive exp in dvlpmt or application support positions performing the following: in-depth knowl in info systems & ability to identify, apply,
EMPLOYMENT
& implmt best practices; understanding of key business processes & competitive strategies related to the IT function; planning & managing projects; ServiceNow Dvlpmt & Administration incl Javascript, Script Includes, Workflows, UI Actions & Policies, & Automated Test framework (ATF); ServiceNow functionality areas, incl Incident, Problem, Change, Asset Mgmt, CMDB, Service Request Mgmt (Catalog items), Service Portal, SLAs, Knowl Mgmt; & working w/ HPALM. In the alternative, employer will accept a Master’s deg in Comp Sci, Comp Engg, CIS or rltd tech’l field + 3 yrs of exp in dvlpmt or application support positions performing the aforementioned. Position may be eligible to work hybrid/remotely but is based out of & reports to Truist offices in Raleigh, NC. Must be available to travel to Raleigh, NC regularly for meetings & reviews w/ manager & project teams w/in 24-hrs’ notice. Apply online (https://careers.truist.com/) or email resume to recruitment@truist.com (Ref Job# R0106364).
Software Developers
Software Developers/(.Net) Systems Developer–Multiple Openings - Durham, NC. Analyte IT Services LLC needs professionals: Work using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, .net, ODP.net, C# , MVC, API, jQuery, JSON and ASP.NET Core 5.0. Req. - Bachelors + 2 yrs. Comp Sal. Relocate to unanticipated sites. No National/International travel. Send resume to Ref: President, 4819 Emperor BLVD, Ste 418E, Durham, NC, 27703.
Sr Infrastructure Engr
Sr Infrastructure Engr sought by GRAIL in Durham, NC to engage w/external infrastructure team to manage on prem physical IT infrastructure & support org’s networking, compute cluster & storage needs. BS+6 yrs. Salary range $164,486 to $172k. Apply at JobPostingToday.com under Job ID 23615.
Sr Analytical Technical Support Engineer
SAS seeks a Sr Analytical Technical Support Engineer in Cary, NC to provide tech support for analytical SAS software apps/solutions. Reqs: BS in Stats, Econ, Applied Math or rel + 8yrs exp. Remote role per SAS’ Flexible Work Program. For full reqs & to apply visit sas.com/careers & ref Job # 2025-40052.
