WALTER Magazine - April 2024

VENETIAN PRINCESS

RALEIGH’S VILLAGE DISTRICT

Furnishings by Theodore Alexander, Uttermost, Universal, A&B Home, Iconic Pineapple, Lillian August for Hickory White, Lawrence Ltd, Sarreid Ltd, Precedent, Ann Gish and hand-knotted rug from India

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This bedroom offers a nice take on the mixing of materials. You have this really cool Theodore Alexander bed — paired with an awesome rug, and it starts to bring the whole look together. They may look like disparate pieces in the showroom, but when you put it all together, it makes an impact.”

-Den Crallé, President / CEO Green Front Furniture

CHAOS TO CREATIVITY

— Lindsay Sartorio, Senior Design Consultant

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by Lidia Churakova

Reviving

Joshua Steadman (HATS);

Taylor McDonald (YOGA); Bryan Regan (BEER); Tyler Northrup (BASEBALL)

A New Era

EDITOR’S LETTER

THU, MAY 2 | 7:30PM FRI/SAT, MAY 3-4 | 8PM

Conner Gray Covington, conductor

On Fridays, I usually work from home. Even though we have a dedicated office area where I can plug into a big monitor, I often find myself working from the kitchen table. There are three giant, south-facing windows in that room, so there’s great natural light. My cat likes it when I work there. He sandwiches himself between me and the laptop and frequently sleeps on my arms while I type.

I spend a fair amount of time staring out those windows while I’m in between tasks or just thinking. I’m always amazed by all the action! The spring brings on a flurry of activity (I just saw a bluejay with a stick in its mouth, presumably to build a nest!) and the changes from week to week, as trees start to leaf out and flowers open, are incredible. The little anole lizards come out and sun themselves on the brick patio, and the rabbits come through at dusk and dawn.

In the summer, our backyard is lush. I can see at least six different species of trees even within our relatively small side yard, and they attract even more kinds of birds. Sometimes a hummingbird comes through, and I spend more time than I should trying to get a decent photo of it. In early August, our fig tree fills with

fruit, and the birds, squirrels, bees and June beetles just go crazy. By fall, the squirrels seem even busier, launching themselves off my roof into the magnolia tree next to the house with pecan nuts in their mouths to bury in my garden.

Winter is quieter, but even then you can feel the rhythm of the garden, especially if it’s disrupted. Sometimes a gaggle of grackles will come through, noisy as heck. Or everything will go quiet, which usually means a hawk is in the vicinity. At night, I’ve seen opossums and the occasional raccoon.

I sometimes wonder at how connected I can feel to nature, even though we live downtown (I can see the Fayetteville Street skyline out my window, too). It’s a nice reminder — especially with Earth Day this month — that our little backyard is part of a larger world.

Ayn-Monique Klahre Editor

Left: With my cat, Levi, working at the dining table. Right: Addie and Laura at the viewing party for Big Night In for the Arts, a fundraiser for the United Arts Council.

APRIL 2024

EDITORIAL

Editor

AYN-MONIQUE KLAHRE ayn-monique@waltermagazine.com

Creative Director LAURA PETRIDES WALL laura@waltermagazine.com

Associate Editor ADDIE LADNER addie@waltermagazine.com

Contributing Writers

Finn Cohen, Catherine Currin, Jim Dodson, Mike Dunn, Julia S. Jordan-Zachery, Colony Little, David Menconi, Liza Roberts, Rachel Simon

Contributing Poetry Editor Jaki Shelton Green

Contributing Copy Editor Finn Cohen

Contributing Photographers

Michael Benson, Alex Boerner, Samantha Everette, Charles Harris, Bob Karp, Taylor McDonald, Tyler Northrup, Catherine Nguyen, Eamon Queeney, Bryan Regan, Joshua Steadman

Contributing Illustrators

Lidia Churakova, Gerry O’Neill, Grace Ladner

Intern Elaine McManus

PUBLISHING

Publisher DAVID WORONOFF

Advertising Sales Manager JULIE NICKENS julie@waltermagazine.com

Senior Account Executive & Operations CRISTINA HURLEY cristina@waltermagazine.com

Finance STEVE ANDERSON 910-693-2497

Distribution JAMES KAY

Inquiries WALTER OFFICE 984-286-0928 info@waltermagazine.com

Address all correspondence to: WALTER magazine, 421 Fayetteville Street, Suite 104 Raleigh, N.C. 27601

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JACK ANDREWS, FRANK DANIELS III, DAVID WORONOFF In memoriam FRANK DANIELS JR.

© WALTER magazine. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without the express written consent of the copyright owner. Published 12 times a year by The Pilot LLC.

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CONTRIBUTORS

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Rachel Simon is a Raleigh-based writer and editor whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Cut, Vulture, Vice and many other outlets. She also teaches writing with Redbud Writers Project and Gotham Writing Workshop. Her first book, Pickleball for All, was published by Dey Street in 2022. “I’ve been a fan of the Experience Raleigh Instagram account for years now, and I’ve been lucky to get to know the woman behind it! Susan is such a kind human with a wealth of knowledge about this city, and we had a great chat about why this city holds such a special place in her heart.”

ALEX BOERNER / PHOTOGRAPHER

Alex Boerner was a photojournalist for 16 years, working for news organizations in Iowa, Florida and North Carolina. The portraiture and lifestyle imagery he creates now is informed by his experience as a photojournalist, paying special attention to people’s history, spirit and style. He lives in Durham with his wife Kallyn, dog Mazzy and their everexpanding flock of chickens. “Making pictures at the Sandlot Revival is like finding little photographic treasures everywhere.”

TYLER NORTHRUP / PHOTOGRAPHER

Tyler Northrup specializes in making highly stylized images of people active in life and work. He’s been involved with sandlot baseball since it first showed up in the Triangle and has helped foster it into the community that it is today. “Though I generally prefer my time on a baseball field to be spent with a glove on one hand, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to build an outdoor portrait studio during the Sandlot Revival to photograph the many faces and personalities that make up sandlot baseball.”

Piedmont Laureate Emeritus David Menconi spent 28 years at The News & Observer before leaving in 2019. He has been writing about author/musician Tom Maxwell long enough for Tom’s old band Squirrel Nut Zippers to gift him a platinum album for 1996’s million-selling Hot. Interviewing Tom about A Strange and Wonderful Time, his new history of Chapel Hill, was “a fun trip down amnesia lane for both of us.”

Bill Reaves (MENCONI); Others courtesy contributors

DAVID MENCONI / WRITER

“Thank you for including the wonderful article “Coffee with God” by Jim Dodson. What a soulful, peaceful and encouraging piece. Articles like this help one remain oriented to what matters most.”

— James Joslin

“Oami, you are awesome!!! Thanks for shining a light on an already bright star.”

— Beth Khalifa

“So beautiful! All of it!”

Stephanie Watson

“Thanks WALTER for raising up the artists in our community! I can’t believe I get to work with a cover girl! What a beautiful platform for your incredible work, Oami! The world is better for you and your art!”

Annah Lee

“What a fantastic shot of Oami! Can’t wait to read the rest.”

— Melanie Stoer

Writer Colony Little and photographer Joshua Steadman, who worked on the feature about artist Oami Powers.

Folks really loved the March cover...

OUR TOWN

It’s time to get outside! This April, enjoy garden tours, music festivals, plant sales and a renewed energy in town.

A TASTE OF SPRINGTIME It’s exciting to see the first hint of lighter flavors at our farmers markets, some which are now opening for the season. North Hills’ Midtown Farmers Market has all the essentials, plus kids’ activities set up on the lawn (4160 Main at North Hills Street; midtownfarmers.com). The Cary Downtown Farmers Market is another kid-friendly option, with the new playground close by (200 E. Chatham Street, Cary; caryfarmersmarket.com). On the second and fourth Sundays of the month, the Black Farmers Market offers produce and other homemade products (1436 Rock Quarry Road; blackfarmersmkt.com). Of course, there’s the year-round North Carolina State Farmers Market, which is just starting to offer crispy snap peas, delicate lettuces and sweet carrots (1201 Agriculture Street; ncagr.gov).

Bob Karp

DATEBOOK

WALTER’s list of things to see, do and experience this month.

by ADDIE LADNER

DREAMVILLE

April 6 & 7 |

Various times

Founded by North Carolina native J. Cole, the hip-hop music and culture festival Dreamville returns for its fourth installation. Hosted at Dorothea Dix Park, more than 20 artists will perform over two days — including headliners hip-hop and pop star SZA, R&B legend Chris Brown, trail-blazing rapper Nicki Minaj and Cole himself. While on the grounds, guests can interact with art installations commissioned by Artsplosure as well as enjoy food from local vendors and booths from community organizations. From $300; 1030 Richardson Drive; dreamvillefest.com

ROSÉ WINE CLASS

April 2 | 7:15 - 8:45 p.m.

all over the world. $40; 602 Glenwood Avenue; thewinefeed.com

AZALEA SALE

April 4 - 13 | 9 a.m. - 6 p.m.

Is rosé actually red or white? Is it sweet or dry? Do you serve it at room temperature or cold? (Answers: yes, yes and yes.) At Glenwood South purveyor The Wine Feed, learn all about the style of vino that has become widely popular over the years. Store manager and certified wine educator Kayla Eakin will lead the class and you will leave knowing how to select, store, pair and enjoy rosé after sampling varietals from

At the Gardeners of Wake County’s annual Azalea Sale, you can browse more than 120 varieties of azaleas, including hard-to-find deciduous varieties and a spectrum of colors including orange, pink, white and Wolfpack Red (developed by a professor at North Carolina State University). In addition to azaleas, there will be a selection of gardenias, camellias and rhododendrons. Money raised from the plant sale goes towards supporting students majoring in horticulture sciences at

NC State. Free admission; 801 Youth Center Drive; gardenersofwakecounty. weebly.com

THE SANDLOT

April 4 | 8 p.m.

Raleigh Little Theatre’s Movies in the Garden series returns with the showing of the 1990s kids’ classic The Sandlot, starring Tom Guiry, Mike Vitar and Patrick Renna, in the Stephenson Amphitheatre. This coming-of-age adventure is set in a nostalgic summer of baseball, swimming, friendship and mischief. Get there early to grab a beer from Raleigh Brewing and dinner from local food trucks. Pay what you can; 301 Pogue Street; raleighlittletheatre.org

information is accurate as of press time, but please check waltermagazine.com and the event websites for the latest updates.

WOVEN STRANGERS

All month | Various times

Nonprofit Arts Access North Carolina is celebrating the opening of its art gallery in downtown Raleigh. Arts Access Gallery will show and sell the work of artists living with disabilities — the only gallery in the region to do so — offering a showcase of its mission to make art accessible to all. For the inaugural exhibition, artist Jean Gray Mohs will present Woven Strangers, a body of work that includes 13 pieces made with materials like acrylic paint, waxed thread and wood. Mohs was diagnosed with a lung disease at 19 years old, and her work celebrates the balance and resilience of living with chronic illness. “This exhibition comes near the five-year anniversary of my double lung transplant and I couldn’t think of a better place to share my work and meaning behind it,” says Mohs. “I cannot wait to see how the space shines the light on and celebrates artists and the community going forward.” Free; 444 S. Blount Street, Suite 115B; artsaccessinc.org

PETER AND THE WOLF

April 6 | 1 p.m.

Offered each season, the North Carolina Symphony’s Young People’s Concert Series sparks the imagination of all ages. This month they’ll showcase Peter and the Wolf, a perennial favorite. “It’s an important piece in the orchestral canon, especially for family programming, because of how the story introduces the instruments of the orchestra,” says Mary Huntley, director of communications at the symphony. Recording artist and actress Yolanda Rabun will serve as the narrator so that children understand how the instruments portray different characters. Before the show, an Instrument Zoo will provide young guests a chance to play real instruments and Marbles Kids Museum will be on-site with a preconcert activity. From $32; 2 E. South Street; ncsymphony.org

MASTER CHORALE GOES TO THE MOVIES

April 6 | 3 & 7:30 p.m.

Do you like singin’ in the rain? Join the North Carolina Master Chorale at The Rialto as it performs a showcase of iconic tracks from feature films. From classics like “Moon River,” “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and “Get Happy” to tunes from newer movies (see: Toy Story, the Harry Potter series), the 180-person choir will offer toe-tapping tunes in a breadth of genres. From $16.32; 1620 Glenwood Avenue; ncmasterchorale.org

2024 WORLD HAT WALK

April 7 | 2 - 3 p.m.

Don your sharpest fedora, flounciest straw topper or chicest cloche for the 2024 World Hat Walk. Raleigh is the first U.S. city to join 16 other cities around the globe in this tradition, which started in London 10 years ago. “We’re really hoping that it grabs the attention of a lot of hat lovers. It’s a great way to start a conversation with people,” says local milliner Katie Allen (learn more about her work on p. 82). Walkers will meet up outside of the Raleigh Convention Center, then make a loop around downtown. Free; 500 S. Salisbury Street; liftedmillinery.com

CROWNING GLORY

April 12 - Sept. 15 | Various times

The exhibit Crowning Glory showcases the intimate and deeply rooted tradition of braiding hair in Black women’s communities and families. Featuring photographs by Samantha Everette, Crowning Glory started as a project during her 2021 residency at Artspace and evolved into a traveling exhibit. “I didn’t know it would be

loved as it was, I kept getting requests from other galleries,” says Everette. Her photographs showcase a hair sculptor, braiders, creatives and her main subject, a mother. “I wanted it to be multigenerational,” says Everette. For the CAM exhibit, the giant photographs — each up to 15 feet tall by 20 feet wide — will be printed on vinyl and applied directly to the walls. “The work keeps getting bigger and bigger, literally and figuratively,” she says. “This is how I always intended them to be.” In addition to the images, a film recording of the photo shoot by videographer Corey Lamar will be playing. Free; 409 W. Martin Street; camraleigh.org

PETER LAMB AND THE WOLVES WITH SIDECAR SOCIAL CLUB

April 12 | 8 p.m.

Head to Five Points for an evening of jazz galore. Four-piece jazz fusion band Peter Lamb and the Wolves will grace

the stage at The Rialto this month with special guest Sidecar Social Club, a musical group with speakeasy and cabaret vibes. Before the show, the Enloe High School jazz band will be performing outside. “Having grown up in Five Points, The Rialto has always been my favorite theater and place to see movies. I saw Pulp Fiction and Rocky Horror Picture Show and Clerks there, films that very much affected my upbringing and taste in art and music. In fact, The Wolves and I will perform several tunes from the soundtrack of Pulp Fiction — it is, after all, the best soundtrack ever,” says frontman Peter Lamb. From $25; 1620 Glenwood Avenue; therialto.com

INTO THE WOODS

Starting April 18 | Various times Kids aren’t the only ones who get to enjoy fairy tales. See Theatre in the Park’s production of Into The Woods, a twisted mishmash of classic stories

incorporating characters like Little Red Riding Hood, Jack (and the Beanstalk), Rapunzel and Cinderella. “Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine created a timeless tale which immediately became a beloved musical, worldwide,” says director Nancy Rich, who’s been a fan of the musical since it debuted in the 1980s. “And as I grow older, I feel like I’ve gained a deeper understanding of this piece.” From $33; 107 Pullen Road; theatreinthepark.com

Make a Statement

DUELING DINOSAURS GALA

April 19 | 6:30 - 10 p.m.

Celebrate the long-anticipated reveal of Raleigh’s newest and largest residents — fossils of a tyrannosaur and Triceratops — at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. To kick off the momentous exhibition, the museum is hosting a prehistoric-themed soirée at the new state-of-the-art SECU DinoLab. At the gala, experience an exclusive preview of the dinosaur pair, themed spirits and hors d’oeuvres (that will surely be a hit with carnivores and omnivores alike), dancing, music and science fun. From $200; 11 W. Jones Street; naturalsciences.org

EARTH DAY!

April 19 - 21 | Various times

Celebrate and help our little patch of earth this Earth Day. Enjoy Raleigh Earth Day 2024 at Dorothea Dix Park, a free event with games, music, environmentally conscious vendors, and a movie at Flowers Field to cap it off (April 19; 5 - 10 p.m; 1030 Richardson Drive; dixpark.org). Or head to Moore Square for the all-day Earth Day Extravaganza hosted by The Great Raleigh Cleanup and RALToday. It kicks off with a 2-mile fun run and walk to Raleigh City Farm and back, then continues with yoga in Moore Square, a community clean-up, an ecomarket and film screening of WALL-E. (April 21; 8 a.m. - 6 p.m.; Moore Square; raleighcleanup.org/earthday).

MERLEFEST

April 25 - 28 | Various times

Named after the late, legendary bluegrass musician Eddie Merle Watson, MerleFest is a four-day celebration of music predominately inspired by the Appalachian mountains. This year, the lineup includes notable acts like Donna the Buffalo, Chatham Rabbits, Chatham County Line, Molly Tuttle and the Golden Highway, Earls of Lancaster, Sierra Hall and Nickel Creek. Beyond the music, peruse vendors, enjoy nature walks and, if you have young ones with

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SOCKS & UNDIE 5K RUNDIE

April 27 | 9:30 a.m.

Help nonprofit Note in the Pocket fulfill its mission of providing clothing to families and children experiencing homelessness and poverty by participating in its annual Socks & Undie 5K Rundie, a race that raises funds for these essentials. Since 2013 the organization has clothed more than 54,000 individuals in Wake County — this year the hope is to clothe another 11,500. “The Rundie provides a wonderful opportunity to raise awareness for the issue of clothing insecurity while celebrating the power and love of our community,” says Note in the Pocket director Dallas Bonavita. In addition to the race, there will be a Finish Line Festival with food trucks, bounce houses, face painting and donation stations for gently used clothing. From $35; 4730 Hargrove Road; noteinthepocket.org

you, swing by the craft tables at the Little Pickers Family Area. From $80; 1328 S. Collegiate Drive, Wilkesboro; merlefest.org

RAULSTON BLOOMS

April 29 | 10 - 3 p.m.

Spend the day at the JC Raulston Arboretum celebrating all things flora at its annual Raulston Blooms festival. Serious home gardeners will enjoy the plant sale and talks with local experts (like Brie Arthur’s session on “Creating Creative Containers”) while little ones will enjoy themed activities like a family scavenger hunt. Also be sure to check out the impressive handmade structures in the Birdhouse Competition, a draw every year. Food trucks like Empanadas RD and MunchiLove will be selling lunch. From $5; 4415 Beryl Road; jcra.ncsu.edu

A Local Perspective

Iby RACHEL SIMON

photography by CHARLES HARRIS

f you’ve ever found yourself with the sudden urge to check out a museum after scrolling on your phone, chances are you have Susan Murphy to thank. The 59-year-old Raleigh native is the face behind the popular Experience Raleigh Instagram account, on which she not only highlights dining and cultural options in the Triangle, but also shares stories about Raleigh’s history and our ever-changing community.

Mu rphy grew up in Hidden Valley (“North Raleigh before there was such a thing as North Raleigh,” she quips) and attended Meredith College. Other than

a few years in London (where she met her husband, with whom she has two children), she’s lived here ever since. Although Murphy had long enjoyed sharing her love of her hometown with others, it wasn’t until 2019 that she decided to turn that interest into her full-time job. At first, she simply showcased spots that she visited regularly, but eventually Murphy began featuring a wider variety of cultural opportunities. Here, Murphy shares what she loves about living here and how she’d spend a perfect 24 hours in town.

Susan Murphy is the Raleigh native behind one of the city’s most popular Instagram accounts

WHAT’S ONE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RALEIGH AS YOU GREW UP AND NOW?

When I was young, everyone was from here. But in the 1970s I started getting new kids in my class from the North, because of IBM and Northern Telecom and RTP. I distinctly remember the first time a girl in my class brought a bagel for lunch. I thought, that’s just a stale donut!

WHERE DID YOU HANG OUT AS A KID?

There was a movie theater in North Hills where the Bonefish Grill is now, and in the summer, all the neighborhood kids would go to the movies. Where Glenwood Elementary School is now used to be a wild horse pasture, and then it had trails for minibikes and motorcycles.

WHERE DID YOU GO TO COLLEGE?

I was going to go to East Carolina University, but my mother was sick in the hospital with cancer, so I went to Meredith. When she died, I was glad I was in Raleigh and I ended up staying there.

SO YOU’VE ALWAYS LIVED HERE?

Sort of. After college, I started working at the Radisson [now the Sheraton] in sales. It was my dream job; I loved hospitality so much. But after about a year, I was like, I really need to see the world, and that’s when Pan Am came through Raleigh for recruiting. I thought, this is my next step. I was an international flight attendant for them for years, and when Pan Am went out of business in the 1990s, I moved back and got an apartment on Wade Avenue; that was the coolest place to live then. I started working for USA Today in sales before transferring to their London office, where I met my husband. He loved Raleigh, so we had the idea that we would move back here.

YOU RAISED YOUR FAMILY IN FIVE POINTS. WHY THAT NEIGHBORHOOD?

My grandparents lived there. After they died, my husband and I had the opportunity to buy their house, and we’ve been there ever since. Now, there are so many places that I can walk to, it’s a thrill! There’s Ajja, Trophy Brewing moving in

next door, and then just down Whitaker Mill is Raleigh Iron Works. Of course there’s still NOFO, which is one of the best places in town.

WHAT OTHER PARTS OF RALEIGH HAVE CHANGED A LOT?

Glenwood South! In 2001, I was just starting to hear about it. The Rockford was like the first place there, and then The Hibernian opened up. I also started seeing all these high-rises being built and businesses coming downtown. Going to First Friday was always one of my favorite things to do, and I loved it when I started seeing people I didn’t know.

WHAT LED YOU TO LAUNCH EXPERIENCE RALEIGH IN 2019?

My passion has always been welcoming people to Raleigh and promoting the city as a great place to live and visit, so after I got laid off [from a tech company in 2018], I was looking for a job doing that. But my friend said, why don’t you just do it yourself? When I started my Instagram, it took off. The posts that did really well were like, a beautiful view from a really green park, or a cocktail on a rooftop with a skyline in the background. But when COVID hit, that changed my mission… I got to show people what they could still do outside

and keep Raleigh alive. Suddenly it went to, OK, you can’t go out in public, but you can still go to these amazing parks, or this place has a new patio and you can sit outside, or buy this cool t-shirt to keep somebody in business.

HAS RUNNING THE ACCOUNT HELPED YOU LEARN MORE ABOUT RALEIGH?

Absolutely. Take Anna Julia Cooper [a Black Raleigh-born educator and feminist]. I’d driven by her historical marker on S. East Street at least once a week, and when I finally took the time to read it, I thought, I need to find out more about this woman. Now I post about her every year.

SOMEONE HAS 24 HOURS IN RALEIGH. WHAT DO YOU RECOMMEND?

It starts with Dix Park. There’s nothing like it with the history, the views. And then I would say to go to a brewery. Trophy’s one of my favorites; Crank Arm is another great one. If you’ve got time, go to the North Carolina Museum of Art and the Museum Park, which is the largest of its kind in North America. And of course, I’d say stop by NOFO because it’s got one of the best assortments of different North Carolina products!

WHERE DO YOU TAKE VISITORS?

The Players Retreat, because it’s got a great vibe, great service and one of the best burgers in town. I also love taking friends to N. Person Street. You could go for a nice meal at Jolie or Crawford & Son, or if you’re there during the day go to Edge of Urge and Yellow Dog Bread Co., then go down and have a drink at Stanbury. And then Krispy Kreme! There’s just about everything that you’d want.

WHAT DO YOU LOVE MOST ABOUT LIVING IN RALEIGH?

There’s so much that makes Raleigh great — from the ballet to the symphony to the art museums to the galleries to the parks — but it’s still a small town in so many ways. I also love seeing people move here from all different backgrounds and generations of life. I love the perspective that new people bring.

GARDEN PATIENCE FOR PLENTY

April is a welcome month with its warmer days and colorful blooms. Tom Packer, president of the Gardeners of Wake County, shares these tips for home gardening.

PREPARE FOR ANNUALS

Now that your soil’s had a rest, it needs to be assessed and, most likely, amended. From April through November, the Wake County Master Gardener Extension program offers soil testing kits for free (visit wake. ces.ncsu.edu for info). “Depending on the results, you’ll know whether you need a nutrient fertilizer or something like lime to reset and nourish your soil,” says Packer, who suggests doing this once a year.

PRACTICE PATIENCE

You may be eager to get your garden going, but it’s risky to start summer vegetables like melons, cucumbers and beans at the beginning of April. Packer recommends waiting until the end of the month. “There’s no advantage to planting early — once you put them in the ground you can’t move them,” he says.

WELCOME HUMMINGBIRDS

These tiny, brilliant birds start appearing this month! “The male hummingbirds come back first, then the females follow,” says Packer. He suggests planting colorful, tubeshaped flowers like salvia, foxglove or honeysuckle to encourage the birds to visit. “Plant mature plants so they will bloom as the weather warms,” says Packer. This is also the month to put out hummingbird feeders, he says; just be sure to clean them first.

—Addie Ladner

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Strange & Wonderful

Tom Maxwell revisits the mid-90s Chapel Hill music scene in this memoir

by DAVID MENCONI

photography by MICHAEL BENSON

Way back in the mid-1990s, a book publisher tried to get Tom Maxwell to write a “memoir in progress.” Maxwell played in Squirrel Nut Zippers, whose hot jazz was starting to resonate with audiences even before the Chapel Hill group’s 1997 calypso hit “Hell” (written by Maxwell) turned them into unlikely platinum-level stars. Maxwell gamely tried to write a few journal entries about life on the road before deciding he just didn’t have the bandwidth to document his Zippers ride while also living through it.

As he puts it: “I was too busy being shot out of a cannon with a drink in my hand.”

Three decades later, however, Maxwell wound up writing that book after all. And it covers not just the Zippers’ story, but the entire scene from whence they came. In 300 pages, A Really Strange and Wonderful Time: The Chapel Hill Music Scene 1989-1999 (Hachette Books) tells the story of a music scene that many participants summarized at the time as “all character, no plot.”

But there’s plenty of plot to Strange and Wonderful. The book covers most of that era’s major flagship acts — Superchunk, Ben Folds Five, Southern Culture on the Skids — along with Archers of Loaf, Metal Flake Mother, Polvo, Zen Frisbee and other local stars and nearstars. It also spotlights some of Chapel Hill’s important cultural institutions, from Cat’s Cradle to the restaurants where so many musicians earned a living between gigs and rehearsals.

“It’s really a love letter to that time and place and people,” says Maxwell. “Chapel Hill was an incredibly sweet spot of cultural abundance, affordability — and walkability. One big reason it worked so well for everyone there was how close together everything was. That’s one reason why the book has a map. This is a Southern story, so it’s very much about place.”

Maxwell grew up in the Western North Carolina hamlet of Burnsville before coming to Chapel Hill in the 1980s to attend the University of North Carolina. But his real education came in local nightclubs.

As drummer in the band Teasing The Korean (later renamed What Peggy Wants), Maxwell was part of a generation of alternative rock bands in Chapel Hill. After the Seattle band Nirvana’s sudden breakthrough in 1991, hardedged music became commercially viable overnight. Chapel Hill became an indie-rock gold-rush town.

“I grew up in Chapel Hill and there was always a music scene here,” says

Steve Balcom, former general manager of the Zippers’ label Mammoth Records. “Then in 1991, suddenly there were all these bands here getting attention and labels flying in to see them. It was kind of insane how it all came together in that era.”

For all the attention and buzz, however, the Chapel Hill acts that would have the most commercial success in that era weren’t the post-punk bands. Instead, it was the Zippers and Ben Folds Five, a pianopop trio, both of whom had million-selling albums in the late 1990s.

“It’s really a love letter to that time and place and people... This is a Southern story, so it’s very much about place.”

— TOM MAXWELL

The Zippers had come together more or less by accident, at a series of potluck parties where indie-rock types got together to play old-style speakeasy jazz. Less a serious band than a tongue-incheek art project, the Zippers’ success was the strangest and most wonderful fluke of all — and also a quintessential North Carolina story.

“Culturally, North Carolina artists have always been able to create extraordinary things even while having this beaten-dog self-image,” says Maxwell. “Like we’re not good enough to run with the big dogs even while exporting enormous talents elsewhere. That’s part of what I wanted to accomplish with this book, pointing out something that was ours. It seems overdue. I’m not a team player or parochial guy, but gee whiz, come on.”

Maxwell admittedly has “a famously terrible memory,” so he interviewed

every musician, participant and observer he could find from back then (full disclosure: that included me). Last summer, when Cat’s Cradle hosted a raucous memorial wake in honor of Ben Folds Five’s late producer Caleb Southern, Maxwell served as master of ceremonies. Onstage at the start of the night, he looked out at the packed house and declared that he had interviewed “just about every person in this room” for his book.

Much has changed since 1999, and most of the bands covered in Strange and Wonderful are long gone. Maxwell himself doesn’t even live in Chapel Hill anymore, having moved to New Bern and semi-retired from music several years ago (he does plan to perform a few songs at some readings, which will be his first live performances since pre-pandemic times).

Still, vestiges remain. Superchunk and Southern Culture are still carrying on. So is Cat’s Cradle. But there’s no denying how much Chapel Hill has changed.

“I don’t want to be the curmudgeon weeping over the irretrievable past,” Maxwell says. “But the thing I describe in this book will have to appear elsewhere because Chapel Hill has become a gated community. I don’t see how anyone there can work as a dishwasher, live downtown and play in three bands anymore. But is that spirit still there? It must be. UNC is still there, and smart, curious young people are still coming to town.”

Spring Exhibitions

Crafted Modern: The Collection of Rob Williams Through April 20

Lee Hall: Immediate Landscapes Through May 5

Pulp & Bind: Paper & Book in Southern Appalachia Through June 2

The Reading Room: From Seuss to Geisel & Back Again Through June 9

Free Admission · Closed Mondays

&BATHtour SPRING KITCHEN

Brought to you by The Remodelers Council and the Home Builders Association of Raleigh-Wake County APRIL 27-28, 2024

For years, the Home Builders Association of Raleigh-Wake County has been a resource for insight into the latest architectural and interior design trends. Its annual home tours, the Parade of Homes and the Remodelers Home Tour, allow our area’s pool of talented builders, designers and remodelers to showcase their work. These popular events attract thousands of current and prospective homeowners to step inside remodeled and new homes for inspiration.

This year, the HBA added a new event, the Spring Kitchen & Bath Tour. This weekend-long showcase will focus specifically on kitchens and baths — the most-renovated parts of the home — with all the latest in design, technology and innovation. From tile trends to lighting ideas to thoughtful floor plans, it’s an opportunity for attendees who may be building or renovating homes to glean fresh ideas.

The Spring Kitchen & Bath Tour will feature 22 homes across Wake County from Apex, to Raleigh and up to Wake Forest. The tour will be open to the public for one weekend only, on Saturday, April 27 from 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. and Sunday, April 28 from 1 - 5 p.m.

The Spring Kitchen & Bath Tour is free and open to the public, no tickets required. Visit kitchenandbathtour.com for more information.

kitchens

The kitchen is the heart of the home — but as the most popular space for family and guests alike, it needs to be both functional and beautiful. The Spring Kitchen & Bath Tour offers great examples of this! Here are some trends you might notice.

Natural materials are showing up in unexpected places. One example of this is a kitchen by Wood Wood Wise Design & Remodeling, above, where a curved walnut range hood is the focal point of a crisp navy and white kitchen. Open plan spaces are still in style, and for good reason: breaking down walls to create a single dining and kitchen area can make an older home feel more generous and inviting. See an example of this in Apex, within a total home renovation by Wake Remodeling. Since storage is always a concern, keep an eye out for some clever solutions. Highlights include a new construction from Hearthstone Luxury Homes with a pantry door hidden inside sleek cabinetry and an upscale scullery with wooden shelving and a quartz countertop in a new build by H.J. Morris Construction.

Finally, look for eye-catching surface treatments. Red Ladder Residential worked with Carolina Custom Kitchen & Bath to install a thick quartzite countertop with mitered edge with a backsplash of the same material. Tri Pointe Homes and AR Monterey Bay Raleigh both used wall tile in shades of blue — a popular color this season — to add interest to their kitchens.

Taylor McDonald Photography

baths

The bathroom is the place where you start and end your day, which is why many of the builders on the Spring Kitchen & Bath Tour encourage styling this space after an upscale spa — a true sanctuary within the home.

What’s in a spa? A soothing color scheme, airy feel and amenities for your comfort. Tile is the primary way to establish the color scheme, either by using a single tile treatment throughout the space that highlight its different architectural elements, or choosing a unique tile that a homeowner loves. Wilks Builders offers a lovely example of this, above: done in shades of cream and taupe, the floor tile adds visual interest within a generous shower and bath area that’s full of natural light. Similarly, Bluestone Builders used a mix of green, white and gold hues for a spa effect.

Floor-to-ceiling glass enclosures, as well as wall-mounted vanities and faucets, are a contemporary way to make a bathroom feel more spacious. See an example of this in a primary bath remodel from Colorful Concepts Interior Design in North Raleigh, which also incorporates LED mirrors with defoggers and three levels of lighting. Another way to feel like there’s more space: with two vanities, instead of one, so a couple can get ready at the same time. See an example of this inside the space built by Hearthstone Luxury Home entry in Wake Forest.

NATURE The BUZZ

I’ve always been interested in pollinators and native plants, but my three years of working at the North Carolina Botanical Garden really helped me understand their connections. Bees are unique in that they rely on pollen as food for their larvae and have branched hairs somewhere on their bodies that are excellent at accumulating pollen as they visit flowers.

More than 80% of the flowering plants in the world and at least a third of our crops depend on animal pollinators, and bees are the primary workers. Honeybees, a non-native species, get most of the publicity because they are critical as pollinators, especially for farmers. But we have 560 native bee species in North Carolina that are also very important.

With the abundance and variety of native plant species at NCBG, I couldn’t help but notice many bee species that were new to me. Here are a few of the more interesting ones that I’ve observed.

BUMBLEBEES

North Carolina’s 15 species of bumblebees are very efficient pollinators, and they are generalists, meaning they pollinate many different plant species. They’re fast workers, too, using their bulk to push their way into many flowers other insects can’t. Bumblebees tend to be quite fuzzy, which causes pollen to stick to them better, and they can forage at lower temperatures and light intensities than most other pollinators. They are also excellent “buzz pollinators,” which means they can use sonic vibrations from their wing musculature to dislodge pollen. This is important for plants like tomatoes and blueberries that do not release their pollen easily. These social bees nest in colonies underground, in places like old rodent burrows, or above ground in rock piles, inside bird houses, or other cavities.

Exploring the habits of North Carolina’s unique native bees

words and photography by MIKE DUNN

SPRING BEAUTY BEES

Most of our native bee groups are solitary nesters (which makes them much less likely to sting, by the way). One of the so-called mining bees (this group digs into soil to make a nest chamber) is the Spring Beauty Bee. It is a pollen specialist, collecting pollen only from

More than 80% of the flowering plants in the world and at least a third of our crops depend on animal pollinators, and bees are the primary workers.

its namesake flower, the Spring Beauty. I have occasionally seen one covered in the bright pink pollen of these early bloomers.

The female of this species is hairier than the male, and she uses the pollen that accumulates on her body to form a pink ball, which she places underground into brood chambers that she’s already dug. She lays a single egg on the pollen ball for the larva to eat when the egg hatches. The larva then pupates over the winter and an adult emerges the following spring — just in time to visit the blooming Spring Beauties.

CELLOPHANE BEES

I encountered another type of mining bee on an early spring hike at Johnston Mill Nature Preserve, a Triangle Land Conservancy property in Orange County. My wife and I noticed a distinctive small bee with a striped abdomen on many of the blooming spring ephemerals. We soon found a concentration of these bees flying low over the ground. I knelt down to photograph one on the leaf litter, and as I focused for another shot, it disappeared into the leaves. That’s when I noticed a nearby mound of soil with a pencil-sized hole.

We watched these bees for a while and

discovered what looked like a colony scattered over a large swath of ground in the floodplain of the creek. Many of the entrance mounds to their burrows were partially hidden in the leaf litter, but all were about the size of a golf ball with one hole near the top. The bees appeared to be going into the burrows laden with pollen and then exiting free of that cargo, presumably having stored it for their soon-to-be developing young. These are a type of plasterer bee (also called cellophane bees); my best guess is Colletes inaequalis, the Unequal Cellophane Bee.

The reason they are called plasterer or cellophane bees is that females produce a type of polyester that becomes the brood cell for their young. Though these bees are solitary (a female digs her own

burrow and tends it herself), they tend to nest in aggregations, sometimes in groups of hundreds or more, especially in sandy soil on south-facing slopes. The female creates several brood cells that resemble small plastic bags inside chambers of a foot-deep tunnel, stocks them with a liquid pollen and nectar mix, and then suspends one egg above the food larder in each cell.

People are often alarmed at finding aggregations of these bees in their yards, but there is no need to be concerned as they tend to be quite docile. They are among the earliest bees to be active and live only for a few weeks before the entire colony is reduced to the developing larvae and pupae living underground until the following spring.

Clockwise from top left: An Unequal Cellophane Bee at the entrance to nest tunnel, Leafcutter Bee cuts on leaves, Lemon Cuckoo Bumblebee on coneflower, Leafcutter Bee bringing in a leaf. Opposite page: An American Bumblebee showing a pollen basket on its leg.

NATURE

LEAFCUTTER BEES

One April morning, I had a close encounter with a different native bee with another unusual nesting habit. I caught a glimpse of a green object near the entrance of a piece of plastic tubing in the yard. The green object hovered near one end of the tubing, then disappeared inside.

It looked like the work of a leafcutter bee, a native bee whose handiwork I see every spring. These bees make small round holes in the edges of leaves and then use the circles of leaf material to make their nest chambers in hollow tubes or in the ground. The apt genus name of this group of bees, Megachile, comes from a Greek term meaning big lip.

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I set up my camera and caught a bee carrying a folded piece of Redbud leaf as she approached the entrance to the tubing. She quickly went inside (I could see her movement inside the translucent tube) and took the leaf fragment to a mass of other greenery a couple of inches inside the tube entrance. She stayed a little over a minute and quickly departed. Within two minutes, she was back with another, smaller piece of leaf and repeated the sequence.

But on her next visit, she was not carrying anything green. This time, it was a load of pollen. That’s because each nest contains several cells. The female stocks each cell with a loaf of stored pollen and then lays a single egg in each; each cell will produce a single bee. Most leafcutter bees overwinter in the nest chamber as newly formed adults and then chew their way out the following spring.

This is just a small sample of some of the fascinating life histories of our native bees. The more I learn, the more I realize that our native bees are truly bee-autiful and bee-zarre, so get out there and see some bees this spring.

a SLICE of HOME

Eastcut Sandwich Bar offers a delicious spin on a classic deli offering

by CATHERINE CURRIN

photography by BRYAN REGAN

When Brad Bankos and Steve Wuench moved to Durham from the Northeast (New York and New Jersey, respectively), they felt that something was missing: a great sandwich. “I went to business school with Steve’s wife, and after we graduated, we were wanting to scratch the entrepreneurial itch,” says Bankos, who has worked in the restaurant industry most of his career.

The duo wanted to create a place where they felt at home, with chef-driven sandwiches and a great beer program. Eastcut Sandwich Bar, born in Durham in the summer of 2018, became an instant hit for Duke students and neighbors alike. “The idea for the name Eastcut was to incorporate an East coast vibe without calling it that,” says Bankos. “Everything we do is cut from the right side of the country, up and down.” The menu is filled with sandwiches paying respect to New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia and more.

The pandemic slowed down Eastcut’s expansion into Raleigh, but the space they eventually found, in Raleigh Iron Works, was exactly what they had been looking for. “We always really focused on being that neighborhood hangout in Durham,” says Wuench. “Iron Works didn’t feel like downtown, but was surrounded by a lot of neighborhoods.” The concepts are identical, offering up sandwiches, salads and sides along with an

extensive local beer list. The Iron Works location boasts a sunny dining area done up in blonde wood and white subway tile, with primary-color pops in the artwork and furniture.

Bankos and Wuench both have fond memories of the Italian delis of their childhood, and it’s evident with many aspects of Eastcut’s menu: the Boardwalk Italian boasts four cured meats along with lettuce, tomato and pickled red onion; the Avocado Caprese is a twist on another classic. Housemade mozzarella and kimchi slaw find their way onto many of the sandwiches. There’s an entire cutlet program, using a thin-pounded, breaded and fried chicken, eggplant or vegan protein as its base. “We didn’t want it to feel exactly like an Italian deli, so we played on the use of the chicken cutlet,” says Wuench. The East-Katsu sandwich pairs the cutlet with kimchi slaw, tomato, pickled red onion, sweet soy and spicy mayo; The Jet has it with Buffalo sauce, mozzarella, lettuce and tomato.

Many of the sandwiches are served on a kaiser sesame roll by Union Special (there is also a hoagie-style sub and a gluten-free option). “One of our biggest challenges was finding the right style of bread,” says Bankos. “Once we found the sesame roll, that solidified the base of how we approach the menu — the

bread reminds us of home.”

While the East Coast deli concept is the main draw, the menu includes nods to other sandwich traditions, including cheesesteaks, fried chicken sandwiches and falafel served on sandwich or salad. All of Eastcut’s sauces are made in-house, from the classic Ranch to the Green Goddess to a nut-free Pesto Aioli.

Now that Eastcut’s a well-oiled sandwich-making machine, Bankos says that he and Wuench are focusing on how their business can do good: “We’re working on creating a good environment for our team and a positive impact on our local community.” To that end, Eastcut has four local nonprofit partners to whom they provide a percent of sales throughout the year, and they offer employees paid time off to volunteer.

One of Eastcut’s partners is the Triangle Land Conservancy. “We’re grateful for Eastcut’s partnership, and we’re big fans of Eastcut’s food, too!” says Casey Therrien, TLC’s associate director of philanthropy.

Scenes from Eastcut, including one of its signature cutlet sandwiches, the Parm, top left, and its Housemade Mozz Sticks, bottom right

Force Meets Flex

Stepping into Arrichion East Raleigh, a hot yoga and HIIT (high-intensity interval training) gym in the Gateway Plaza shopping center, you can tell that folks have been through the ringer. A good gym activates endorphins through some mild to moderate suffering. Arrichion doesn’t stink, but heat plus vigorous movement have left the sense that people have been sweating in here.

Arrichion’s bright, welcoming storefront is divided into two rooms. One is lit by the floor-to-ceiling windows and full of wooden cubes for box jumps, free weights and barbells, with numbers taped to different sections of the room to indicate which exercises are done during circuit classes. The other is a dark, hot room where the yoga classes are held, at temperatures up to a very toasty 104 degrees Fahrenheit.

Arrichion — named after a Greek Olympian who died in 564 BC — is a gym concept with five locations that was started in 2009 by siblings Quinn and Ty Reynolds. The two grew up in Greensboro, part of an athletic family. Quinn played semiprofessional soccer starting at age 16 for the Greensboro Twisters and at the University of Illinois in the mid-2000s. Ty, one of the top high school wrestlers in the U.S. in 1998 who went on to compete at North Carolina State University, came up with the strength-training half of the concept. Ty and their brother Clay wrestled at High Point Central High School, and their father Larry, also a former wrestler, coached his two sons in high school.

by FINN COHEN

MCDONALD

The Reynolds family runs the four locations in North Carolina — Gateway Plaza and Brier Creek (the first to open) in Raleigh, Durham and Charlotte — and one in Salt Lake City, where Quinn now lives. (The East Raleigh and Durham locations are franchises, and the family owns the corporate entity.) The basic premise behind the gym is combining flexibil-

Arrichion East Raleigh combines hot yoga and strength training

photography by TAYLOR

Left to right: Shannon Trantas, Bishop Daniels, Elizabeth Weeks.

ity and cardiovascular health (through the hot yoga) with circuit training. But rather than pushing clients through a competitive rubric, the overall goal is to create a space where any age, fitness level or body type feels welcome.

The East Raleigh location is a prime example. Each of its three owners come from very different backgrounds. Bishop Daniels wrestled in high school and college before becoming a preschool and kindergarten teacher; Shannon Trantas is a licensed pharmacist who found her way to Arrichion when she needed some time away from the pressures of being a working mother; Liz Weeks is a fulltime nutritionist for the state of North Carolina, conducting oversight of federal funding for nutrition at child and adult daycare centers. The avenues they each navigated to end up running a gym like this also reflects a certain practicality toward their approach, which is meant to remove some of the stigmas around yoga.

“One of our sayings is, leave your om at home,” says Bishop. “It’s hot! Your physical being is being challenged, but you’re mentally being challenged as well. We work on our breathing, but there’s no chanting.”

“I’m not going to say, go into uttanasana — I’m going to explain the pose and talk you through how to move your body to get there,” says Weeks. But that doesn’t mean it’ll be easy, she adds: “You’re gonna come out looking like we dumped a swimming pool in the yoga room.”

Aside from the normal challenges of running any business, the East Raleigh owners faced an uphill battle when they opened in September 2020, five months after their initially scheduled launch. Gyms had been shut down, vaccines were not available and cleaning protocols were unclear. Offering hot yoga and intense weight training for people who were supposed to stand 6 feet apart and wear masks — while breathing extremely hard — was a tough sell. “Recommendations would change all the time,” says Weeks. “It was challenging trying to implement those regulations and also respect the privacy of our clients.”

It took a couple years of reduced classes (instead of 35 people in the yoga room, they allowed 15 to 18) to get the East Raleigh business to something resembling a normal gym. The schedule now has nine classes throughout the week, ranging from slower heated yoga classes to Olympic weightlifting and combinations in between. It’s meant to offer multiple levels of exercise that can appeal to a broad clientele.

Today, the owners say they’ve built a varied community, with clients that range from track athletes in peak form from nearby St. Augustine’s University to office workers trying to maintain their fitness. “One of the things our clients have said when they come in is that not everybody looks like typical yogis,” says Trantas. “We’ve got older folks, we’ve got younger folks; we’ve got really athletic folks, we’ve got non-athletic folks.”

“It’s not really a competitive environment as much — it’s more of an encouraging environment. It’s about your personal best and your personal growth, so it’s welcoming in that way,” says Brian

Megilligan, 52, a data engineer consultant in Raleigh who started going with his wife in 2021. “CrossFit — I tried that for a while. I just found that to be more competitive in nature. And frankly, I wasn’t very good at a lot of those things. So I didn’t stick with that.”

“It makes you feel good — I like the energy that it gives you when you finish it,” says Michelle Keaton-Barrow, 61, a real estate agent in Garner who admitted that she had taken two classes there the day before. “I’ve taken some of my friends; some have come back, some have not. It’s not for everybody. But I would say you can start at any age.”

“Somebody will ask me what I do to work out, and I tell them, I do yoga — they look at me and tell me I’m lying,” says Daniels, whose physique is, on the surface, the result of some serious weightlifting. “Whether you’ve done yoga your whole life or you can’t touch your toes, we try to make it a little bit more accessible. Even if you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re least going to get a good sweat out of it.”

BOOK

BETWEEN TWO TRAILERS

ABridal gown care that goes above and beyond.

professor and minister, J. Dana Trent usually writes about spirituality — but her latest book, Between Two Trailers: A Memoir, shares the story of her hardscrabble upbringing. Her earliest years were spent in Indiana with her father — a drug dealer who taught her to cut up weed for dime bags — and mother, whose mental illness often kept her bedridden. At age 6, Trent and her mother abruptly moved to North Carolina, where they wrestled with homelessness and bankruptcy.

With hard work and the support of extended family, Trent found herself on her feet, graduating from the Divinity School at Duke University in 2006. But after both her parents died, she reexamined her childhood, corroborating her memories against military records, court records, medical records and family photos. What she found included diagnosed mental illness, documented substance abuse and a grand jury indictment. “Until I did this research, I didn’t understand why my parents acted the way they acted,” she says.

Trent hopes Between Two Trailers will encourage others to explore their own painful memories. “So often we don’t share the hard parts of our lives, but that can be to our detriment,” she says.

— Ayn-Monique Klahre

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History that Puts Our Spring in Your Step

If nature has taught us anything it’s that time is precious. Good thing Winston-Salem understood łhe assignment. Come join us — and spend the day touring our historic homes. Exploring our heirloom gardens. Or filling your soul and your senses with food so fresh it’d make James Beard blush. So grab your keys. Reserve your favorite hotel. And enjoy the magic of time well spent.

ART + ARTISANS

Downtown Arts District

Shopping and Mural Walk

STORIES + SUNSHINE

North Carolina

gateway to mysteries

John Beerman deeply sees and paints the natural world

by LIZA ROBERTS

Before John Beerman paints a landscape, he studies the place that’s caught his eye and picks a particular day and time. Maybe it’s a low-lit evening in fall, or maybe it’s a morning hour that only exists over a span of days in spring, when the angle and energy of the sun provides a certain glow. And then he goes there, day after day, at that appointed hour, building his painting bit by bit until the moment is over — the hour has passed, the shape of light has changed, that bit of season is gone.

One spring morning not long ago, he arrived at a field at Chatwood, the Hillsborough estate owned at the time by his close friend, the author Frances Mayes. Beerman arrived well in advance of his chosen hour, because it takes some time to set up his easel. He has an intricate system of clamps and slats to hold boards in place that will serve as a perch for

both his canvas and his paint. His paint is of his own making, too: it’s a homemade egg tempera, created with pigment and egg yolk that he keeps in an airtight jar.

To accompany him on one of these plein air excursions is to realize that Beerman doesn’t just look like Monet at Giverny, with his straw hat, wooden easel, linen shirt and leather shoes, but that he sees like Monet: he views the natural world with the same kind of reverence. Beerman studies the landscape as if it has a soul, character and moods. He learns its nuanced beauty out of a deep respect — and only then does he paint what only he can see.

“I have always found the natural world a gateway to the greater mysteries and meanings of life,” Beerman says. At a time when the world faces so many problems, he says, “it’s important to see the beauty in this world. It is a healing source.”

Beerman has often ventured to notably beautiful places around the world to find this gateway. To Tuscany in springtime, coastal Maine in summer, the glowing shores of Normandy or the estuaries of South Carolina. Recently, he is choosing to stay closer to his Hillsborough home.

“Sometimes I feel rebellious against going to those beautiful places and painting those beautiful sights,” he says.

“My appreciation and love of the North Carolina landscape continues to grow. I feel we are so fortunate to be here.”

This year, so far, he has been painting the views from his studio windows. “I am struck by the idea that every day the sun moves across the sky, the seasons change,” says Beerman. “I’m looking at one house in five different versions throughout the day.”

The particular house on his easel now is a millhouse currently under reno-

White House From Studio Winter Morning with Figures

vation. He has a bird’s-eye view of the millhouse from his second-story studio, but it constantly evolves with the men working on it and the light that suffuses it. What Beerman is painting, though, isn’t “a house portrait,” but an attempt to capture “the luminosity of that particular light.” Also compelling him is the energy of the project at hand: “The guys working on the house are just as interesting to me,” he says, so he has begun to paint them into the scene, even though figures have rarely appeared in his landscapes.

The ability to revisit the subject of his fascination day after day as he completes a painting is a refreshing change, he says. Typically, he’d paint small oil sketches in the field, then bring them back to the studio to inspire and inform his large oil paintings. Here, he can continue to study parts of the house, the men and the project that elude him; he can “get more information” as he goes.

But if his proximity to his subject has changed, Beerman’s essential practice has not.

“I’ve always felt a little bit apart from

“My appreciation and love of the North Carolina landscape continues to grow. I feel we are so fortunate to be here.”

— JOHN BEERMAN

the trend,” he says. “I love history. And one also needs to be in the world of this moment, I understand that. I’m inspired by other artists all the time, old ones, and contemporary ones… Piero Della Francesca, he’s part of my community. Beverly McIver, she’s part of my community. One of the things I love about my job is that I get to have that conversation with these folks in my studio, and that feeds me.” Beerman’s work keeps company with some of “these folks” and other greats in the permanent collections of some of the nation’s most prestigious museums as well, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art and governor’s mansions in New York and North Carolina.

The paintings that have made his name include celebrated landscapes of New York’s Hudson River early in his career (he is a direct descendent of Henry Hudson, something he learned only after 25 years painting the river), of North Carolina in later years and of

Left to right: White House From Studio Winter Sunny Morning and White House From Studio Winter Sunny Morning with Yellow Bucket. Opposite page: Rooftop and Trees From Studio, Winter Sunny Morning.

Tuscany, where he has spent stretches of time. They all share a sense of the sublime, a hyperreal unreality, a fascination with shape and volume, space and light, a restrained emphasis on color and an abiding spirituality.

“Edward Hopper said all he ever wanted to do was paint the sunlight on the side of a house,” Beerman says. “And I so concur with that. It’s as much about the light as it is about the subject.” A painting of the lighthouse at Nag’s Head includes only a looming fragment of that famous black-and-white tower, but it’s the glow of coastal sun Beerman has depicted on its surface that make it unmistakably what and where it is.

“With some paintings, I know what I want, and I try to achieve that. And other paintings start speaking back to me,” he says. Beerman’s talking about another painting, of a wide rolling ocean and a fisherman on a pier. As he painted it, childhood memories of Pawleys Island,

South Carolina, came into play: “In this old rowboat, we’d go over the waves. And in doing this painting, that came in… ahh, maybe that’s where I am. Sometimes it bubbles up from memories that are right below the conscious.”

The rhythm of the work he has underway now suits him well, he says: “I’ve traveled a good bit, but I’m a homebody. I like cooking on the weekends, and making big pots of this or that. I love being able to walk to town, or ride my bike to town.”

And he’s eager to stick close to his chosen subject. “I love the long shadows of the winter light,” he says. “I want to capture it before the leaves come back on the trees. I have that incentive: to get in what I can before the leaves come back.”

Whatever he’s painting, Beerman says he’s always trying to evolve: “One hopes you’re getting closer to what is your core thing, right? And I don’t want to

get too abstract about it, but to me, that’s an artist’s job, to find their voice. I’m still in search of that. And at this time in my life, I feel more free to express what I want to express, and how I want to express it. I don’t feel too constrained.”

The Raleigh Police Department Foundation has made a profoundly positive impact. The Foundation not only helps bridge the gap between the department and its members, but also helps us better reach the community.

The donation of Police horse Luna has remarkably benefited my day-to-day duties. I'm honored to receive such a generous gift. Not only does the Foundation help through monetary donations, but they also donate their personal time to the department. Showing up means a lot to the officers. To receive such positive support goes a long way in helping with the mental aspect of our job.

If you are able to donate to the Foundation, no matter how much or how little, it not only supports the Police Department, but it supports the community you live in as well. I can't think of a better way to see your donation's impact on bettering your community. Together, we can make a positive difference in our city.

– Senior Officer Dawn Montemurro

An Ever-Changing Garden

May the work never be done

by JIM DODSON illustration by GERRY O’NEILL

The spring gardening season officially got underway this year with the necessary removal of a 70-year-old red oak tree that threatened to fall on my garage office. Being a confirmed tree hugger and septuagenarian myself, I felt for the old boy. But I’d probably have felt worse — perhaps permanently — had the old fella decided to fall on my office with me in it.

Such is the fate of an ever-changing garden, which is a redundant phrase since every garden everywhere is ever changing, if only by a matter of degrees. Any gardener worth their mulch will tell you that the work is never finished.

There’s always some new problem to contend with or a fresh inspiration incubated over dark winter days to finally put into motion. We are, as a result, forever incomplete gardeners, revising and learning as we go.

In my case, this year has been all the above — new problems, fresh inspiration and learning as I go. As the result of the day-long operation to remove “Big Red,” as I called the elderly oak, half a dozen young plants just awakening from their winter nap had to be dug up and set aside so the crane removing the tree could navigate a path across my backyard garden, churning the ground up as it went.

I took this as a sign from on high that it was time to make several big changes in paradise. The first move came on the east side of our house, where a trio of formerly well-behaved crepe myrtle bushes were suddenly running amok and threatening to blot out the sun. The task of digging them out of the cold January ground proved the wisdom of Robert Frost’s elegant aphorism that the afternoon knows what the morning never suspected — i.e. that some tasks that were easy in the morning of youth prove to be monstrously difficult in the afternoon of age.

Still, I’m nothing if not a committed bugger when it comes to getting my

way in a garden. After several hours of intense work with pick and shovel, all under the watchful eye of Boo Radley, the cat who suns himself in that particular part of the estate on winter days, the monstrous shrubs finally came out and I went in for a much-needed lunch break, muddy but triumphant.

“My goodness,” said my wife, stirring soup. “Who won the fight?”

You see, back in the “morning” of my gardening years — that’s five different gardens ago, by my count — Wendy always found it highly amusing that I treated garden work like a full-contact sport, where blood of some sort was inevitably shed. In those days, I was so into clearing trees and rebuilding the ancient stone walls that I rarely noticed cuts, bruises or even gashes that needed a stitch or two. In those faraway days, all I needed was a long hot soak in our clawfoot tub, plus a couple cold Sam Adams beers to put things right.

These days, in the metaphorical “afternoon” of life, the cuts and bruises are fewer and the cure for sore muscles comes via a hot shower, change of clothes and a nice afternoon nap with the dogs — though I have been known to wander outside just before the dinner guests arrive and get myself dirty all over again.

I think my sweet gardening obsession comes from a long and winding line of family farmers and gardeners, abetted by a childhood spent in several small towns of the South where I stayed outside from dawn till dusk, building forts in the woods, climbing trees, damming creeks and digging earthworks under the porch for my toy armies. More than once, I had to be hauled out from under the porch for church with my “good” Sunday pants streaked with red clay.

My mother, poor woman, nicknamed me “Nature Boy” and “Angel

with a Filthy Face.” Worse than death was having her spit on a handkerchief to wipe a smudge of soil off my cheek as we entered the sanctuary.

Despite the damage from removing Big Red and heavy winter kill in both my side and backyard gardens this spring, I’m always nicely surprised by the resiliency of my suburban patch. One day, I’m looking at a bare perennial bed and the next, dozens of green shoots are coming up. The daffodils never fail to rise nor the cherry trees bud. The hosta plants miraculously return. The dogwoods burst into bloom and the azaleas erupt in technicolor glory.

This annual choreography of springtime is a nice reminder that we human beings do the very same thing. Nobody escapes hard winters, actual or metaphorical. The weather of life beats everyone down at some point or another. But slowly and surely, we reemerge as the days lengthen and the sun grows warmer. Soon the sheer abundance of blossom and green makes a body forget the cold months of unseen struggle to get here.

Though I am an unapologetic fan of winter — my best season for writing, thinking and planning new adventures in the garden — the happiest time for this incomplete gardener comes when I see what managed to survive the winter and has come back with new vigor and surging optimism. Such sights make my old fingers itch to get gloriously dirty.

This spring, there will probably be a new garden shed surrounded by ferns where Big Red once stood, and old Boo Radley will have a new perennial garden full of flowers in which to sun himself on cool summer mornings. I may even finally finish the cobblestone pathway I started last year.

The job in a garden, you see, is never done. And that’s just the way I like it.

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Ibis of Guyana

by JULIA S. JORDAN-ZACHERY illustration by LIDIA CHURAKOVA

Like the scarlet Ibis I built you a nest, a simple one — a loose platform of sticks. But its foundation was solid as I chose the strongest mangrove tree, well above the water — on which to perch.

Once my young fledgling, you are now independent and able to fly long distances — part of our colony.

Stillness where there was once a glide my wings, vibrantly red, spread wide, are now closed, yet, I remain — faithful.

When you need me spread your wings, open your black bill, and I will hear — your call.

Julia S. Jordan-Zachery is a professor and the chair of the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies Department at Wake Forest University. Jordan-Zachery has also produced the documentary Healing Roots and the chapbook Eat the Meat & Spit out the Bones.

Subscribe to the 2024/25 Season for access to these Special Concerts

CIRQUEHOLIDAYPOPS

KRISTIN

CHENOWETH

ONE NIGHT ONLY

Kristin Chenoweth

SAT, MAY 18, 2024 | 8PM

Mary-Mitchell Campbell, conductor

Kristin Chenoweth joins your North Carolina Symphony for one night only—featuring show-stopping selections from Wicked; Glee; You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown; and more. The Emmy and Tony Award-winning actress and singer dazzles audiences with her powerhouse vocals and delightful stage presence in a magical evening.

THANKSGIVING WEEKEND

Cirque Holiday Pops

WED, NOV 27, 2024 | 4PM

FRI, NOV 29, 2024 | 3PM

Fun for the entire family! These special matinee performances will take your breath away with stunning aerial feats and jawdropping juggling acts, accompanied by musical holiday favorites.

Classical Christmas with Carlos

FRI, DEC 6, 2024 | 8PM

SAT, DEC 7, 2024 | 3PM

Carlos Miguel Prieto, conductor

North Carolina Master Chorale

New this holiday season, experience selections from Bach’s Christmas Oratorio and Handel’s Messiah with your North Carolina Symphony and the North Carolina Master Chorale.

BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND!

A Candlelight Christmas

FRI, DEC 20, 2024 | 8PM

SAT, DEC 21, 2024 | 3PM

Immerse yourself in the sounds of the season performed in the glow of candlelight. Secure your seats early for these special sure-to-sell-out concerts.

The Ring Without Words

FRI, FEB 28, 2025 | 8PM

SAT, MAR 1, 2025 | 3PM

Carlos Miguel Prieto, conductor

All the drama of Wagner’s four operas is told through the pure power of the orchestra, including Wagner’s masterpiece, Ride of the Valkyries

Mozart Requiem

FRI/SAT, MAY 16-17, 2025 | 8PM

North Carolina Master Chorale

Hear the magnificent Requiem—one of Mozart’s most personal works—performed by your North Carolina Symphony, the North Carolina Master Chorale, and renowned guest vocalists.

Two players from the Carolina Kudzu, a local

baseball team, during a Sandlot Revival tournament.

The Sandlot Revival celebrates the joy of baseball

LET’S PLAY BALL

by AYN-MONIQUE KLAHRE

photography by ALEX BOERNER & TYLER NORTHRUP

The thud of a fist in a mitt, the scratch of a cleat in dirt, chants from the dugout — and if you’re lucky, the crack of a bat making contact with a ball. They’re the sounds of the Sandlot Revival, a baseball tournament of sorts this month at Durham Athletic Park. “It’s just magical to be out there,” says Tyler Northrup, a photographer and organizer for the event.

From April 21 to 23, our local sandlot teams will host five teams from out of state for a weekend of semicompetitive play, plus beer, food and general socialization. “Nobody wins, there’s no trophy in the end,” says Northrup. “The ultimate goal is for this to feel like a block party where baseball is happening.”

Organized by Carolina Sandlot Collective, the weekend is part of a national movement to revive sandlot baseball. What is “sandlot”? It’s sort of like a pickup game, open to any adult, regardless of experience. The idea is that anyone can walk onto the field and start playing. “It’s meant to be a no-pressure, chill environment,” Northrup says. “If you want to flash your skill, that’s great, but you can’t get upset if someone strikes out or fumbles a ball.”

The teams have funny names — around here we have the Car-

olina Kudzu, Raleigh Reapers, Durham Dirtbags and Port City Pickles — and practice in Raleigh, Wake Forest, Wilmington, Durham and Carrboro for about nine months of the year. “The teams play each other once a month, but every other weekend there is open sandlot, so literally anyone can play,” says Northrup.

Even playing against each other, there’s still a friendly spirit. If one team is short a player, someone from another team will throw on their jersey and help them out. “Last year, our game got rained out halfway through, so my team and the other team rolled out the tarp together and then we all went to Boxcar to eat pizza and drink beer,” says Northrup.

Northrup invited fellow photographer Alex Boerner to help him document the Sandlot Revival, with Northrup taking portraits and Boerner catching the action. For Boerner, a longtime Minnesota Twins fan, it was a chance to rediscover his love of the sport. “I played a ton of baseball as a child, but stopped as a teen,” he says.

Since then, Boerner’s started playing for the Durham Dirtbags. “It’s not that it’s anticompetitive, it’s just that you’re only competing with yourself,” says Boerner. “It’s a great vibe.”

This page, clockwise from top: Bats and a microphone in the dugout. Elliotte Douglas-Middleton of the Raleigh Reapers. Beth Philemon of the Durham Dirtbags warms up for a game. Jimmy Assal of the Carolina Kudzu. Opposite page: Players from the Carolina Kudzu lean over the rail at the dugout.

Jake Wood of Lawrence BBQ, top right, who serves up food for the event, with his son. Bottom left: Paul Tuorto of the Raleigh Reapers. Opposite page, clockwise from top: The Crete Street Riot, a New Orleans team, up to bat. Carlo Freeze of the West Philly Waste. Jason Puryear of the Carolina Kudzu.

This page, clockwise from top: Port City Pickles player Robin Wood, in the dugout, celebrates with teammate Kelly Franklin. John Lim of the Raleigh Reapers. Port City Pickles player Matt Emmerich drinks… pickle juice. Matt Koontz of the Carolina Kudzu. Opposite page, clockwise from top: Crete Street Riot players and fans. Franklin sells merch. The mascot for the Carolina Kudzu.

Clockwise from top: Tyler Schwartz of the Durham Dirtbags. Durham’s Bulltown Strutters band. Players from the Crete Street Riot. Joey Carty of the Raleigh Reapers. Opposite page, clockwise from top: A game between the Carolina Kudzu and the Nashville Dollys. Tyler Northrup eats an oyster. Lacie Jay Emmerich of the Port City Pickles.

ECLECTIC LIVING

Homeowner Sheila O’Rourke has an eye for interesting decor. She found her accent chairs, which she reupholstered in watercolor-inspired fabric, at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore and the Parisian stove inside the fireplace at Leland Little Auctions. The 1940s crystal chandelier came from her parents’ beach house in New Jersey.

Sheila O’Rourke’s house is a place to test out ideas with a designer’s eye

PLAYING THE BLUES

by AYN-MONIQUE KLAHRE photography by

CATHERINE NGUYEN

For Sheila O’Rourke, her home is not just a place to live, but a spot to test her design ideas. “I switch things around constantly — l’ll hang up a light and decide I want something bigger, or in brass — I’m always trying new things,” she says. “I’m an eternal learner.”

In fact, the one constant in all of it might be the abundant use of her favorite color. “I’m attracted to blue, I always have been,” O’Rourke says. “I love to use a whole mixture of different blues, all the variations of blue and blue-green. I used to try to not use it too much, but over time I’ve found that the more I use it, the more it acts as a neutral.”

O’Rourke is the interior designer behind Little Mangum Studio. She moved to this 1926 home in the leafy Duke Park

neighborhood, near Durham’s downtown, about 10 years ago after living in New York City, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco. “I was a little nervous, because I’d always lived in bigger cities — but I had these three little kids, so I wanted a yard and some space,” she says.

When O’Rourke and her family moved in, the single-story home felt crowded with small rooms. “There was no through view, everything was very shut off,” says O’Rourke. But she understood its potential. “I could see there was just so much space if we removed some walls and changed where some doors were,” she says. So she opened things up to help spaces relate to each other and improve the flow. Now you can see all the way from the dining room through the kitchen from the front door. “It feels quite generous,” she says.

During the pandemic, O’Rourke did another major renovation. She added a staircase to the main part of the house

so that they could access the walk-out basement, which previously could only be reached through the garage. She then redid the whole downstairs space, creating three bedrooms, a hangout area, and a separate one-bedroom apartment. It nearly doubled the usable square footage of the house. “This house started as a two-bedroom, and now it’s grown into a six-bedroom!” she says.

All along the way, O’Rourke’s been tweaking the interiors — for fun and for research for her work. In the dining room, for example, O’Rourke painted the trim a rich gray, then covered the upper walls with a grasscloth wallpaper and the bottoms with paper with a watercolorinspired pattern. “Painting the trim a dark color was something I’d suggest to clients, but they’d be hesitant — so I did it myself, and now I can show them a picture of it and they get it,” she says. For ideas about how to hang pictures, she’ll show clients her own gallery walls, which

often feature thrift-store purchases mixed in with pieces by family members or local artists. “Any time I find an original oil painting, I scoop it up!” she says. She wallpapered her bathroom in a bold, unusual print, she’s recovered chairs, and she’ll test out materials to make sure they work. What she chooses often reflects the places she’s lived and traveled, like a painting she found at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore of a cypress tree on a coast. “It 100% looks like California, where I used to live,” she says. She has an eye for budget finds, but will splurge when she truly loves something, like the floor tiles in her mudroom: “I pick and choose what I invest in, and these make me happy every single day!”

With all the experimentation, her decor is ever-evolving. “I don’t buy things when I need them, I buy them when I see them — I’m always on the lookout for things for my home,” she says. “My home is my canvas, my creation.”

UTILITY SPACES

DINING IN STYLE

O’Rourke designed the kitchen island around a 10-foot-long slab of soapstone. “I got it for myself so I could feel comfortable recommending it to clients,” she says, noting that it’s held up well for three years. She particularly loves the perfectly round backs of the counter chairs, which she bought even before her kitchen renovation. “I stored them for two years because I loved them so much,” she says. The breakfast area, which incorporates a daybed, is a favorite spot: “This is where everyone ends up hanging out.” Opposite page: O’Rourke found the upper cabinet at an architectural salvage shop in Brooklyn when she lived there and used it as a bookcase for years. When she moved into this house, she happened upon a base cabinet the exact same width — it felt like fate. “I put a marble top on it and painted them the same color, and now I’ll just have to leave it here forever,” she laughs.

WILD WALLS

The dining room is “dead center” of the house, and O’Rourke painted it a dark color as an anchor. The huge table is the centerpiece of the home. “It signifies my whole vibe for this house, it’s a place of welcome — this is where we have people over for Thanksgiving, or I host book club,” she says. Her art is a mix of Goodwill finds, items bought at auction, or personal pieces, like a portrait of a woman by her cousin. O’Rourke put the fish wallpaper in her primary bath. “I saw them in a magazine and had to have them,” she says. Opposite page: “I pick up art all over the place, but it has to have something specific that speaks to me,” she says.

PLAY ROOM

The living area downstairs is a favorite hangout spot for O’Rourke’s three teenagers. She found the animal-shaped benches at the ReStore and gave one to each kid for Christmas one year; now they serve as end tables. The colorful painting is by Raleigh artist Kerry Burch. She bought the large glass table at Leland Little Auctions in Hillsborough to be used for crafts or as a ping-pong table. “The movers said they’d never moved anything this heavy before,” she laughs. Opposite page: The gray-green walls in her bedroom are one of the things she likes to show clients. “I love using a dark color in a bedroom,” she says. The art in here is her “most personal” collection, including pictures from her grandparents, pictures of her kids and artwork depicting some of the places they’ve lived. When they redid the basement, they added this trough sink to work for the three bedrooms down there.

Katie Allen revives the lost art of millinery

HATbyHAT

by COLONY LITTLE

by JOSHUA STEADMAN

photography

Milliner Katie Allen in her home design studio. Behind her are rolls of sinamay fabric, and in front is a hat block with fabric pinned to it.

For Katie Allen, a hat is more than an accessory, it’s a statement. “Hats lift and elevate an outfit,” she says. Allen is a hat designer and the creator of Lifted Millinery in Garner, which she launched in 2015. The name of her company originally came out of the phrase “lifted from the pages of history,” but it also speaks to the aesthetic and psychological roles a hat can play in both our appearance and mood — and the fact that hats can make the wearer appear taller.

Allen is part of a small legion of hat designers, known as milliners, who use time-honored traditions of haberdashery to make hats and headdresses. Her hats have roots in historical costume design. Some evoke the styles of the 1920s Jazz Age, like sleek turbans and cloches embellished with pins and feathers or widebrim hats trimmed with billowing silk ties. Others nod to the 1960s, like pillbox hats and berets adorned with polka-dot birdcage veils, butterflies and other eclectic accouterments. Contemporary pieces combine bold sculptural shapes or other whimsical themes — Allen styled a recent creation after an archery target, with feather-tipped arrows piercing its crown.

Allen grew up on a farm in the Shenandoah Valley in eastern Virginia. She learned to sew from her mother, making clothes for her Barbie dolls as early as 5 years old — not that it sparked a passion, at the time. “My mom would try to teach me and get frustrated,” Allen laughs. “I once told her that I’d never have a job where I sewed, which now is just funny.”

The two also watched classic 1960s movie musicals like My Fair Lady and THe Music Man, which instilled in her a love for theater. “I loved the hat shop in Hello Dolly!,” Allen says. That passion extended into a love for vintage clothing, antique textiles and theater. She studied theater design and production, with an emphasis on costume design, at Shenandoah University. After graduating in 2004, she worked in costume design, but when the recession hit a few years later, she left design behind for more stable pursuits in project management and sales for an elevator company.

A headband decorated with flowers made from currency titled Money for Nothing. Allen showed this hat at a Milliner’s Guild display in New York City in 2022. Opposite page: Allen shows the steps in hat blocking, which involves pinning fabric to a form, then using heat and steam to set the shape. The bottom image shows a collection of her hats.

But Allen didn’t abandon design work completely. After relocating to Wilmington with her husband, she continued her theatrical and garment design work in her spare time, working on projects for independent film productions and regional theater.

While doing so, Allen discovered an unmet market demand. “The one thing that people kept asking for were hats, because they had trouble finding exactly what they wanted,” Allen says. Finally, her husband and a friend convinced her to make a go for it as a business. She transformed a guest room in her home into a milliner studio, filled with all the accouterments she needed.

The process begins with selecting a hat block, which dictates the shape of the headpiece — say, whether it’s a fascinator, fedora, cloche or derby hat. Then the hat material is selected; options include felt, straw and sinamay, a strong woven fabric made from the stalks of banana trees. The fabric is then shaped through a process called blocking, which involves pinning the material into place on the hat block and applying a combination of heat and steam to set the shape. Then the hats are embellished with trims including ribbons, flowers, beads, feathers, hat pins and other treasures that Allen sources and collects from vintage stores.

Shortly after creating the Lifted Millinery brand, Allen and her family moved to the Raleigh area, where she’s been running it out of her home design studio. “We have a wonderful, vibrant community of people here who are really interested in locally made, handmade quality items,” she says.

In addition to making hats from scratch, Allen restores vintage hats. It can be an intimate process. “I end up connecting with a lot of people through their stories. Hats have such a history, especially if they’ve been given as a gift,” she says. She describes one she’s currently working on, which was badly water-damaged. “It was my client’s grandfather’s and it has a lot of sentimental value,” she says. Because the material is good, she can rework it: “The person who created it put a lot of care into it, they hand-stitched everything

A hat titled Micro-Wave, which Allen created in 2020 for the Melbourne International Millinery Competition. The hat tied with another piece for third place in the competition.

and there’s no glue involved.”

Sometimes, refurbishing a hat can take the form of reblocking the hat to restore the original design or replacing materials that have faded or torn. Other times she will take a vintage hat and use it to create an entirely new design. She describes a 1960s fur felt hat that had belonged to a client’s grandmother. “It was made to sit high up on the head perched on top of a bouffant style — I took it apart, blocked it and we trimmed it to make it a nice cloche,” she says.

Recently, Allen has been reworking a lot of bridal hats. “Customers will bring me big, 1980s beaded tulle bridal hats and I can turn them into chic fascinators that work for today, and they, in turn, can be remade into something else in the future,” she says. Spring is her busiest season, between the Kentucky Derby, Easter and weddings. In the fall, clients will contact her to design winter hats for themselves or to give as gifts during the holidays, and year-round, she keeps busy making hats for film, theater and photo shoots. Photographer Anke Sturhahn-Humphreys has used many of Allen’s hats. “She understands my aesthetic and she immediately picks up what I’m looking for and comes up with the most beautiful designs,” says Sturhahn-Humphreys.

Allen is an active board member of the Milliner’s Guild, an organization that celebrates the art through events like hat competitions and museum exhibitions. It’s part of her dedication to trying to get more people to embrace hats — whether they’re buying from her or someone else. “If at all possible, go to a milliner or hat maker who can advise you on how to fit it correctly to your head,” she says. “It’s like searching for a good pair of jeans or a good pair of shoes: you have to look until you’re completely satisfied.”

Some people may feel shy about wearing hats, but through the design process, Allen helps customers see their style as a powerful form of self-expression. This attention to detail and collaboration is at the core of Allen’s mission as a milliner: “My goal is for hats to come back into prominence as a well-considered item in someone’s wardrobe.”

“My goal is for hats to come back into prominence as a well-considered item in someone’s wardrobe.”

— Katie Allen

The first hat Allen entered into a millinery competition, in 2018. It’s called Mudlarking on the Thames and received Best Overall Hat.

BUYTICKETSNOW!

Harvey’s new book, A Happier Life, will be out on June 25.

BOOK CLUB & LAUNCH PARTY

Kristy Woodson Harvey

Wednesday, April 24

6-9 p.m.

City Club Raleigh

PRESENTING SPONSOR

SUPPORTING SPONSOR

Your $75 ticket includes cocktail hour, dinner, a book talk and signing opportunity with Kristy Woodson Harvey, plus a pre-ordered copy of A Happier Life.

Join WALTER at City Club Raleigh as we host Kristy Woodson Harvey, a New York Times bestselling author of 11 novels, including The Summer of Songbirds, Under the Southern Sky and The Peachtree Bluff Series. Over summer supper and drinks, she’ll share a preview of A Happier Life, which explores the power of family, the bonds of friendship, and the boundless nature of love.

THE WHIRL

WALTER’s roundup of gatherings, celebrations, fundraisers and more around Raleigh.

AN EVENING TO IGNITE

On Feb. 9, hundreds of individuals came together in support of nonprofit Neighbor to Neighbor, which works to reverse the effects of poverty on Raleigh’s youth. More than $200,000 was raised, with over 40 businesses from the Triangle events industry donating goods and services to ensure that 100% of the proceeds went directly to N2N. Supporting businesses included The Merrimon-Wynne House, La Fête Planning & Design, Curated Events, Rocky Top Catering, HL Catering, Party Reflections, EastCoast Entertainment (The Sleeping Booty Band) and more.

Melanie Gering, Anne Lamm, Will Kiley, Tiye Montgomery, Spencer Hathcock, Royce Hathcock

Kiley Randel, Savannah Baldwin, Kate Grunberg, Jason Grunberg

Thorne Daubenspeck, Spencer Hathcock, Casey Harris, Jodi Strenkowski

Lauren Short, Nicole Taylor

Chrissy Vance, Joe Vance

THE WHIRL

IT’S WEY COOL!

AND IT’S WEY CLOSER THAN YOU THINK

Just a short drive away, there’s a perfect place to escape for the day. We’re conveniently nestled in the heart of Southern Pines, a quaint town which boasts local restaurants and boutiques that offer something for everyone.

SUNDAY, APRIL 7 & 28

11:30 AM - 2 PM

“Come Sunday” Jazz Series

April 7: Kenni Holmen

April 28: Brooke Alford and Ensemble

Coined for Duke Ellington’s classic “Come Sunday,” each jazz event features internationally renowned jazz artists who will perform their own rendition of Ellington’s masterpiece. Bring lawn chairs and a picnic. Cash bar available.

Presented by the North Carolina Arts Council, a division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources in conjunction with UNC Pembroke

Tickets start at $27.50 for Weymouth Center members

REGULAR HOURS:

Boyd House and NC Literary Hall of Fame: Monday-Friday, 10am-4pm GARDEN AND GROUNDS: Daily, Sunrise to Sunset

weymouthcenter.org 555 E. Connecticut Ave. Southern Pines, NC

MAY 4, 2024, FROM 5 - 8 PM

Horses Benefit Kids Derby Party Fundraiser for Weymouth Equestrians to provide young people the opportunity to learn how to ride and care for horses. Enjoy a team show jumping invitational, bourbon, BBQ and bluegrass at the Barn. Prizes & raffle for your win/place/show Derby picks.

TICKETS

$100 each for Weymouth Members

$125 each General Admission

Includes food, music and a signature

Mint Julep. Dessert features Kentucky

Butter Cake from Ashten’s Restaurant.

$500 VIP Package: Includes 1 parking space and tent spot for the invitational and 4 tickets to the party

WALTER CONTRIBUTORS PARTY

On Feb. 28, WALTER magazine hosted many of its writers, photographers and illustrators at its office on Fayetteville Street for a get-together. It was lovely for so many of our contributors to get a chance to catch up with each other, and for our WALTER team to be reminded that even though our staff is small, our village is huge — and filled with crazy Triangle talent!

WALTER staff

Samantha Everette, Laura Wall, Catherine Nguyen

S.P. Murray, Lissa Johnsen, Bryan Regan

Liz Condo, Susanna Klingenberg

SPRING INTO FLAVOR

Ella’s is a superior collection of artisan popcorn. The mix-ins are indulgent ingredients ranging from authentic Belgian chocolate to real berries and nostalgic cereals.

Order now at ellaspopcorn.com for local pickup and nationwide shipping and use code “WALTER” and receive 15% off your next order!

Mehmet Demirci, Mallory Cash, Geoff Wood

Forrest Mason, Francesca Mason Colony Little, Helen Yoest

Trey Thomas, Leah Finch

Lidia Churakova, Jason Miller, Mike Dunn, Melissa Dunn, Sherri Miller

Courtney Napier, Ayn-Monique Klahre

A storied piano and violin from Nazi-era Germany will be brought to life for a special afternoon performance. Featuring violinist Jacqueline Saed Wolborsky and pianist Mimi Solomon.

SUNDAY, MAY 5th at 2 PM North Carolina Museum of Art Auditorium

THE WHIRL

NCRLA STARS OF THE INDUSTRY AWARDS

The North Carolina Restaurant and Lodging Association (NCRLA), the voice of North Carolina’s restaurant, foodservice and lodging industry, hosted its annual Stars of the Industry awards ceremony in February at the Sheraton Imperial Hotel in Durham. Twenty-two recipients in 11 categories were recognized for their exemplary service, leadership, innovation and dedication to the restaurant and lodging industries.

Back row: Doris Huebner, Fred Huebner, Aimee Guthinger, Keith Rhodes, Josh Cooke, Tom Pashley, Troy Stauffer, Diane Tighe, Lou Moshakos, Jill Highsmith, Joy Moshakos, Debra Thompson. Front row: Xiomara Toledo, Kathy Baize, Bill Rabon, Alexander Collazo, Lynn Minges, Sera Cuni, Porcha Overbey

Xiomara Toledo

Inez Nicholson, Russ Evans Leonardo Williams

Lynn Minges

WINDRIDGE GARDENS

THE WHIRL

STRING QUEENS AT NCMA

The String Queens performed for two sold-out concerts for Chamber Music Raleigh’s Sights & Sounds Series at the North Carolina Museum of Art. They also performed in eight N.C. cities in eight days as part of a Black History Month residency with Chamber Music Raleigh, sponsored by the North Carolina Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.

WAKEMED HEART CENTER LOBBY DEDICATION EVENT

On Feb. 29, WakeMed celebrated longtime philanthropists and local leaders Brenda and Ron Gibson, to dedicate the WakeMed Heart Center lobby in their name. Notable guests included WakeMed CEO Donald Gintzig, former Wake County Commissioner Sig Hutchinson and David Crabtree.

Kendall Isadore, Élise Sharp, Valerie Hillings, Mary J. C. “Jo” Cresimore, Dawn Johnson

Sig Hutchinson, Brenda Gibson, Nancy Hutchinson, Ron Gibson

Donald Gintzig

David Crabtree, Brenda Gibson

CONN COUGAR 5K & WELLNESS EVENT

The inaugural Conn Cougar 5K and Wellness Event took place March 2 at Conn Magnet Elementary School. Over 350 runners and walkers showed up to support Conn’s PTA, which hosted the event. The event was inspired by Tracie Rodriguez, an avid runner and mother of two Conn students.

SPRING COMFORT into

Daniel Gridley, Gabriel Chidester, Michael Warholik, Caryll Orejola

Catherine Revels, Theia Rodriguez, Maddie Montainge, Lexa Rodriguez

Journey Quao, Isla Blyth, Corey Cougar, Hattie Lykes, Evelyn Blyth, Alice Lykes, Lilly Lykes

Stacy Fussell

What’s in a name?

Read on... and see if you know which one of these changes is real (find the answers at the bottom of the page).

HONORABLE MENTION

True or False?

Test your knowledge of our local news

by WALTER STAFF

In a move that’s making waves in Raleigh’s nightlife scene, beloved bar Neptunes Parlour is changing its name. Going forward, it will be known as Nick Neptune’s Parlour, as a nod to guest DJ, community activist and man-abouttown Nick Neptune. “To be honest, people keep asking if the bar is named after him, so we just decided to embrace it,” said owners Erin and Martin Wheeler in a joint statement. “Plus, Nick’s here all the time.”

The underground bar will still retain its signature red-lit dance floor and programming, but its merman mural will be redone to reflect the new namesake, and an apostrophe will be added to the name (another point of confusion, they say). “I’m so honored to be officially part of this storied establishment,” says Neptune, who will not have a financial stake in the business. “It’s a dream come true.”

ENSURING ACCURACY

In a bid to communicate the true identity of a big-time North Carolina agricultural product, the N.C. Sweetpotato Commission is championing a linguistic shift, suggesting that folks who spell “sweet potato” as two words adopt the more accurate

“sweetpotato.” “A sweetpotato, or Ipomoea batatas, is a totally different vegetable than a potato, Solanum tuberosum, so ‘sweet’ should not be used as an adjective the way one might use white, red or russet to describe different varieties of potatoes,” says Michelle Grainger, executive director of the commission. Grainger notes that the one-word spelling has been in place within scientific communities since 1989 and that Gov. Roy Cooper signed a bill in 2019 to change the wording, but that the distinction has not caught on in normal parlance or within dictionary circles.

CELEBRATING OUR CITY

In a move that reflects its growing urbanization, the City of Raleigh has proposed changing its tagline from the “City of Oaks” to the “City of Squirrels.” “Squirrels are native to North Carolina, and they’re an energetic, adaptable species that

thrives not only in green spaces, but in areas with lots of infrastructure — just like Raleigh’s citizens,” says Denny Edwards, president and CEO of the Greater Raleigh Convention and Visitors Bureau. “They’re also diurnal and active year-round, which is a good reflection of our city’s bustling cultural and nightlife and evolving character.” A sketch for the new Raleigh flag was introduced with the proposal, which features an Eastern gray squirrel at its center, our most common species. “It’s just adorable,” says Edwards.

PRONUNCIATION HELP

A bill has been introduced to change the spelling of the names of areas around North Carolina to more accurately reflect their correct pronunciation. “With so many people moving to our state, there has been lots of confusion,” said a press release detailing this bipartisan effort. On the list: Changing Appalachia to Apuhlatchuh, Angier to Annjur, Beaufort to Boefurt, Fuquay-Varina to Fewkway Vuhreenah, Kerr Lake to Car Lake, Mebane to Mebun, Mordecai to Mordukey, Topsail to Topsul and Uwharrie to Youwahree. “We’re confident that these more intuitive spellings will not only help prevent people from getting lost, but help newcomers better acclimate to their new home state,” the bill’s proponents said in a statement.

Answers: False, true, false, false

Hang in there, kiddo.

Hang in there, kiddo.

Hang in there, kiddo.

Hang in there, kiddo.

At WakeMed Children’s, we love what we do almost as much as who we do it for. That’s why, at the community’s only children’s hospital, you’ll nd all sorts of pediatric specialties, all under one roof. Physicians, surgeons, nurses, techs and support specialists, all pediatric-trained. And inpatient care, outpatient care and emergency care designed just for kids. Delivered by hundreds of experts, all of them thoroughly dedicated to a happy, healthy childhood for every one of our kids. To learn more, visit us online today.

At WakeMed Children’s, we love what we do almost as much as who we do it for. That’s why, at the community’s only children’s hospital, you’ll nd all sorts of pediatric specialties, all under one roof. Physicians, surgeons, nurses, techs and support specialists, all pediatric-trained. And inpatient care, outpatient care and emergency care designed just for kids. Delivered by hundreds of experts, all of them thoroughly dedicated to a happy, healthy childhood for every one of our kids. To learn more, visit us online today.

Hang in there, kiddo.

At WakeMed Children’s, we love what we do almost as much as who we do it for. That’s why, at the community’s only children’s hospital, you’ll nd all sorts of pediatric specialties, all under one roof. Physicians, surgeons, nurses, techs and support specialists, all pediatric-trained. And inpatient care, outpatient care and emergency care designed just for kids. Delivered by hundreds of experts, all of them thoroughly dedicated to a happy, healthy childhood for every one of our kids. To learn more, visit us online today.

wakemed.org/childrens

At WakeMed Children’s, we love what we do almost as much as who we do it for. That’s why, at the community’s only children’s hospital, you’ll nd all sorts of pediatric specialties, all under one roof. Physicians, surgeons, nurses, techs and support specialists, all pediatric-trained. And inpatient care, outpatient care and emergency care designed just for kids. Delivered by hundreds of experts, all of them thoroughly dedicated to a happy, healthy childhood for every one of our kids. To learn more, visit us online today.

wakemed.org/childrens

wakemed.org/childrens

wakemed.org/childrens

At WakeMed Children’s, we love what we do almost as much as who we do it for. That’s why, at the community’s only children’s hospital, you’ll nd all sorts of pediatric specialties, all under one roof. Physicians, surgeons, nurses, techs and support specialists, all pediatric-trained. And inpatient care, outpatient care and emergency care designed just for kids. Delivered by hundreds of experts, all of them thoroughly dedicated to a happy, healthy childhood for every one of our kids. To learn more, visit us online today.

wakemed.org/childrens