Artist collective The Grid Project offers a new model for artists of all kinds to collaborate and exhibit in spaces across the Triangle.
by Colony Little

Out the window of his second-floor studio on Hargett Street, Pete Sack sees an area bustling with creative energy that’s in search of a home. Galleries are few and far between, despite the rich community of artists matriculating through the many visual art and design programs in the Triangle. “There are institutions that don’t exist anymore that used to present juried shows for up-and-coming artists,” he says. “If you move here and you’re an artist, where’s your opportunity? How are we welcoming you to the city?”

Sack and fellow visual artist Jean Gray Mohs hosted a series of informal talks in 2023, called Discourse and Dialogue, where artists voiced their concerns. “We started hearing about gaps: it feels like there are fewer places to experiment and gather,” Mohs says. “Whenever we had those conversations, people wanted to get involved.” 

So in November 2023, Sack and Mohs, along with artists Lamar Whidbee and Daniel Kelly, created The Grid Project, an art collective that hosts pop-up exhibitions. Through grant money and their own connections, they’re working to curate hyper-local shows that shine a spotlight on Raleigh’s creative communities. The ultimate goal is for members to act as consultants, providing resources and operational guidance to aspiring artists and curators looking to show their work. 

In May 2024, The Grid Project held its inaugural show at Birdland, an artist-run gallery located in a converted studio space owned by Mike Cindric and his late wife, the esteemed artist and educator Susan Toplikar of Boylan Heights. Titled Alchemy, it featured work by the four founders alongside artists Isabel Lu and Patrizia Ferreira. 

Old-fashioned alchemists were the inspiration for the show, and a description of their role in society from the exhibition statement could double as The Grid Project’s raison d’être: “They endeavored to conjure the extraordinary from the ordinary… Yet in a more profound way, they endeavor to manifest the immaterial through the material — ideas, imaginings, concepts and questions transmitted through scraped graphite, twisted threads, oozing oils and powdered pigments.”

In many ways, The Grid Project is an exercise in social alchemy, creating spaces where artists can come together and showcase each others’ work in a looser, more nimble environment than a traditional museum or gallery setting. While the first show featured visual artists who have already received support through institutions like Artspace, CAM Raleigh and the North Carolina Museum of Art, The Grid Project’s goal is to extend its reach not only to artists and curators who are looking for their first break, but also to artists of different genres. “I realized we need to start casting a wider net,” says Sack.

“You’ve got musicians, poets, dancers… but we tend to work in silos. We’re trying to harness each of those groups and start some cross-pollination.” To wit: one Saturday during the Alchemy show, cellist Jean Gay staged a solo performance at Birdland, activating the artwork through a different sensory lens.

In October 2024, Mohs, along with bicycling advocacy group Oaks & Spokes, presented a cycling-themed show titled Rubberside Down, where the worlds of cycling and art collided in the best sense of the word. It featured emerging and established visual artists including Leigh Ramsdell, Dave Green, Sarah Hammond, Zach Storm and Minori Sanchiz-Fung, who presented art works alongside bicycles. “Leigh has been a BMX biker since he was 14,” says Mohs. “I see his passion for biking reflected in our community, and I wanted to bring these two worlds together.”

The exhibition, which was held at Birdland, also included a bike tour of murals, a self-guided walking tour of open studios around Boylan Heights, a cycling clinic and a pump track created by Ramsdell and Green. “It was really beautiful,” says Mohs. “I met a lot of people I hadn’t seen at an art show before. In Raleigh we have so much going on and it’s all good work — we just like shining a spotlight on it.” 

In November, The Grid Project hosted a show curated by Sack called Floravita, featuring work by Alia El-Bermani, Eric “Skillet” Gilmore, Oami Powers and Sally Van Gorder. Works in the exhibition were meditations on death, using the concept of “memento mori” as a philosophical point of departure. Powers created a group of ceramic flowers that appeared wilted, placed on a bed of soil.

Their decay was emphasized by Powers’ use of wax and charcoal, which tinged the flowers in a gray pallor of death. Gilmore created a series of works using his family’s photographic archive, manipulating the images with screen printing, charcoal and acrylic that stippled the surface, creating a texture that evoked a hazy fog of memory drifting in and out of focus.

Three poets from the Paradigm Poetry Collective created works inspired by artwork in the show and read the poems aloud. “The idea of this exercise was to highlight how one responds to visual art and how one responds to poetry,” says Sam Pepple, poetry director of the Paradigm Poetry Collective. “There is no right way or wrong way to respond to either art form.”

The first series of The Grid Project’s exhibits have been possible through grant funding from SEEK Raleigh, an experimental public arts program from Raleigh Arts. With that support, The Grid Project has a slate of projects funded for the coming year. It also hopes to garner future grants to combine with paid memberships or shows to finance the collective in the long-term. (At its first open call for proposals, last summer, they expected to receive just a handful of submissions — and got 27. “We could have chosen 20 of them, they were that good,” Sack says. “It just proves that there is a hunger for these types of opportunities.”) 

As is the way with alchemy, much of the work by The Grid Project is born out of trial and error; its members are figuring it all out as they go. “I’ve always been like a ‘now, not how’ type of person,” Sack says, though he notes that they’re guided by the experience of Kelly, who was part of a collective in New Orleans. “He’s the conscience of the group — we want to have enthusiasm, but also a dose of reality.” 

For Sack, collaborating in this manner not only helps fellow artists, but it also takes him out of his bubble. “For the first 10, 20 years of my career, I was very focused on my art, but as I’ve gotten older, I also want to give back,” he says. “We need to take advantage of the opportunities that exist and make opportunities for others.” 

This article originally appeared in the March 2024 issue of WALTER magazine