INDY Week

09/19/2025

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.”

Arts leaders say the need is dire—and immediate.

✍️: By Jane Porter
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Wake County spends much less on the arts than its peer counties. Leaders hope a new collaborative plan can help chart a new way forward.

09/18/2025

Wake County congresswoman Deborah Ross recently confirmed that she won’t accept money from the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) during her 2026 reelection bid.

That’s per a Ross spokesperson, as first reported by The Intercept and confirmed by INDY. The spokesperson did not explain why Ross will not accept AIPAC money, and did not respond to a followup question.

Ross has remained relatively quiet on the war in Gaza. In a statement this summer, the congresswoman stood by Israel’s right to defend itself and said that the U.S. “should remain committed to ensuring Israel’s security.”

✍️: By Chase Pellegrini du Paur
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Both Ross and fellow representative Valerie Foushee have recently sworn off money from AIPAC, which previously funneled millions into Democratic primaries in North Carolina.

09/18/2025

Zebulon’s next mayor will preside over an era of explosive growth for the tiny eastern Wake County town—and all of the housing, development, infrastructure, and budgeting concerns that come along with it.

They’ll also be expected to help stabilize a town hall that’s weathered a series of challenges and controversies over the past year, including a high rate of staff turnover, a lawsuit over a rejected development proposal, a commissioner’s resignation and an as-yet unsuccessful effort to replace her, and public calls for the board of commissioners to be reconstituted.

In the five-way race for Zebulon mayor, the candidates subscribe to one of two schools of thought.

✍️: By Chloe Courtney Bohl
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At a Tuesday evening forum, five candidates for mayor made their cases to voters.

09/18/2025

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.

✍️: By Shelbi Polk
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Talking with Jameela F. Dallis about her debut poetry collection, "Encounters for the Living and the Dead."

09/18/2025

When 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.

✍️: By Eva Flowe
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A former repairman, Gene Dillard has spent years embedding his Durham home with mirror, ceramic, and glass bottle mosaic walls.

09/18/2025

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 辫 (biān) / 彼岸 (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.

"Potluck and Portraits" from Jamaica Gilmer and "辫 (biān) / 彼岸 (bǐ àn)" from huiyin zhou and Laura Dudu run through the end of September.

09/17/2025

The INDY's 2025 Endorsements for the Durham Municipal Primary elections are now out. Read our recommendations for Durham mayor and the ward 1, 2, and 3 city council seats below.

🔗: https://indyweek.com/news/durham/2025-endorsements-durham-municipal-primary/

09/16/2025

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.”

✍️: By Nick McGregor
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Joseph Giampino's brush seems to have touched every business sign in Raleigh, from parking garages to city parks.

09/16/2025

Durham labor groups looking to improve wages, housing affordability, and workers’ rights have set their sights on Duke University, the city’s largest employer and private landowner. With local elections getting underway, organizers have found willing partners in the menagerie of Durham council candidates, all of whom seem to agree that Duke University should do better by the people of Durham.

Organizers are trying to tap into election season—and anti-corporate, anti-billionaire, and not-infrequent anti-Duke sentiment—to push the university to put its $12 billion endowment towards its workers and the community.

Last year, the Duke Respect Durham campaign called for Duke to make $50 million annual direct payments to the city (referred to as payment in lieu of taxes, or PILOT). A recent forum, organized by a similar local campaign, Durham Rising, focused on getting candidates for council and mayor to get Duke, per signs at the event, to “show up for Durham.”

✍️: By Chase Pellegrini de Paur
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This election season, labor groups are pushing Duke to put more money toward addressing big issues in Durham like affordable housing, living wages, and school funding.

09/16/2025

In the two days since the INDY published its investigation into Yes for Durham—a new 501(c)(4) nonprofit with undisclosed leadership and connections to one of its endorsed candidates—all four of the municipal candidates endorsed by the group have publicly disavowed it on social media.

Statements from Leonardo Williams, Mark-Anthony Middleton, Matt Kopac, and Diana Medoff all assert that the candidates have not coordinated with Yes for Durham and will not accept its money.

Williams, Kopac, and Medoff included in their statements that they don’t want support from 501(c)(4)s—which can also make independent expenditures supporting candidates, such as sending mailers or running ads—in general. In a text to the INDY, Middleton also said he opposes such support, stating that “dark money has no place in Durham’s local politics and all candidates should commit to that”—Yes For Durham “endorsement status notwithstanding.”

✍️: By Lena Geller
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Candidates endorsed by Yes for Durham committed to not accept any money from the group, which has yet to disclose its leadership.

09/15/2025

How well do you know the Triangle’s biggest stories? Put your knowledge to the test with INDY’s weekly news quiz.

How well do you know the Triangle's biggest stories? Put your knowledge to the test with INDY's weekly news quiz.

09/15/2025

At its regular town council meeting this week, Apex leaders voted unanimously to establish a Community Land Trust (CLT) for affordable housing.

Under the CLT model, town-owned land can be held in the trust in perpetuity and affordable housing built on it and sold to residents at affordable rates with a guaranteed 99-year lease on the land. When an owner is ready to sell, they can work with the CLT to set a new sale price for the home, having gained some equity based on the appreciated value of the home.

“As we know here, land is one of the more expensive aspects of the development costs that we’re facing, which undercuts our ability to offer more affordable homes,” Marla Newman, Apex’s director of Community Development & Neighborhood Connections, told the council at its meeting on September 9. “So if the CLT maintains the land but leases it at a favorable price, then that helps promote affordability, and that buyer or renter is only paying for the structure.”

✍️: By Jane Porter
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At its town council meeting this week, Apex leaders voted unanimously to establish a Community Land Trust (CLT) for affordable housing.