The Grid Project is VAE’s pop-up initiative for artist-driven exhibitions across Raleigh. It connects creatives with spaces, provides support when possible, and sparks visibility, dialogue, and engagement through art in unexpected places.
Current Exhibition(s)
Extraterrestrial Encounters
An Exhibition by Be Boggs and Slater Mapp
Do you believe, or know, that intelligent life exists outside of Earth?
In April 2025 the SETI Institute (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) discovered what could be a collection of extraterrestrial artifacts in an abandoned warehouse in Raleigh, North Carolina.
These visitors seem to be obsessed with Earth and all its lifeforms. They learned how to use cameras and fibers to make interpretations of what they encountered. According to the experts, these beings seem to be creating art as a way to explain what Earth is to their home planet.
This collection is all the evidence we have of their existence.
We do not know why they came here, what they want, or if they are friends or foes.
Some may even appear to be familiar faces…people you know who have been here all along.
Come see this evolving exhibition of extraterrestrial art @birdlandraleigh and discover what belonging on Earth looks and sounds like through the outsiders lens.
Opening Night: December 5th, 6:00 - 9:00
706 Mountford Ave., Raleigh, NC 27603
Hours for Birdland this month:
12/6 Saturday: 12 - 4
12/7 Sunday: 12 - 5 (*with Boylan Art Walk)
Weekdays in December:
MWF: 3:30 - 6 (Slater)
TTH: 5 - 7 (Be)
Weekends in December:
12-3pm (Slater)
3-5pm (Be)
Streetframe
an exhibition of Lee Nisbet & Renzo Ortega
Join us on Friday, November 7th as we celebrate VAE’s latest venture to bring more art and beauty to the streets of Raleigh, featuring the vibrant work of Lee Nisbet and Renzo Ortega.
All of this wouldn’t be possible without our community. Big thanks to Artsplosure for the walls, Empire Properties for the use of space, and to Thomas Sayre & Joan Ellen-Deck for sponsoring this project.
The event is from 6:00 - 7:00 pm and is accessibly located outside on the sidewalk at 200 Fayetteville St.
We hope to see you there!
Exhibition Runs through December of 2025
Past Exhibitions
there is a time to walk around and a time to walk through
30 x 40 x 3.25in
our interiors, an exhibition by Caprice McNeill
Flowers remain Caprice McNeill’s vessels of expression, a visual language for examining the relationship between the inner self and its surroundings. In our interiors, she layers vintage floral fabrics and wallpaper with impressions from a month-long immersion in Italy, tracing how place quietly imprints our inner lives. Italy’s open fields, cultivated land, and distinctive colors resurfaced in patterned expanses, geometric planes, and a renewed palette upon her return home. The vintage fabrics and wallpapers extend this reflection, evoking transformation, atmosphere, and the intimate ways expression takes shape through material and memory. Each piece becomes a study of that reciprocity, how place and perception intertwine, and how interior and exterior worlds remain in constant dialogue.
November 8 - 22
Birdland Gallery is pleased to present Echoes of Modernism, an exhibition that brings together the work of Amba Sayal-Bennett, Daniel Rich, Frances Lightbound, and Sam van Strien, four artists who examine how modernist architecture continues to shape our political, social, and economic lives. Whether considering the monumental scale of urban grids or the façades of corporate buildings, modernist architecture is far from neutral or placeless; they emerge instead as sites of memory, contestation, and lived experience. Through painting, printmaking, and drawing, these artists trace the ways we can engage with, document, and re-imagine the built environment, exposing both its utopian ambitions and its legacies.
Together, their work invites us to see how modernism’s material and symbolic forms are never static: they move, transform, and are reinterpreted across time, geography, and ideology. By interrogating architecture’s capacity to embody power, the exhibition positions modernism not as a closed historical chapter but as a living framework that continues to inform our contemporary experiences.
Oct. 4th - October 25th
Strange Attractors
Martha Thorn and Mike Geary
Birdland | 706 Mountford Ave., Raleigh, NC 27601
The concept of strange attractors - enigmatic points in chaos theory where seemingly random paths converge into patterns of order - informs our exhibition. Though each of us works independently, presenting our paintings together in Strange Attractors creates an environment charged with potential connections. Our distinct visual vocabularies, shaped by unique histories and impulses, orbit common themes while maintaining their own identities.
September 6th - 28
Boylan Arts District Tour *VAE sponsored trolley