Mural shows a young girl smelling a flower with 3D flowers around her.

Get Well Soon is a temporary, public art installation by artist Lamar Whidbee, located on the Spruill Building.

Dix Park Mural Activations

A project with Raleigh Arts and Dix Park


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Dix Park Mural Activations Volunteer Opportunities About the Artists About the Project Timeline

Dix Park Mural Activations

In Spring 2026, three artists were selected by the City of Raleigh to create murals on decommissioned buildings at Dix Park. The selected artists were Luke Buchanan, Jason Lord, and Isabel Lu. They will be installing murals during the spring and summer months. 

Volunteer Opportunities

There are a few upcoming opportunities to volunteer with artists on mural installation. Follow the links below for more information and to sign up.

Paint a Gingko Leaves Mural at Dix Park
Sunday, May 17
Assist artist Luke Buchanan in painting a mural of ginkgo leaves on the exterior of the Dix Park Hospital. The mural will be designed for painting-by-number, so all are welcome to join regardless of experience. Three shifts available: 10am, 1pm, and 3pm. Volunteers will park and meet in front of the hospital.
Read more and sign up to volunteer

Bring a Cyanotype Mural to Life at Dix Park
Thursday, June 11 to Saturday, June 13
Join Artist, Jason Lord, in painting a mural at Dix Park. The mural will be laid out as a giant paint-by-number, and all are welcome to join regardless of artistic experience. Come join in the fun and get creative as we bring life to these spaces! Six shifts available: mornings and afternoons, June 11-13. Volunteers will park and meet in Lot D here. We will be painting the mural on 805 Whiteside Dr.
Read more and sign up to volunteer

About the Artists

Head shots showing three artists. Luke Buchanen smiles with his arms crossed. Jason Lord is pictured in black and white. Isabel Lu leans against an abstract background.

Luke Buchanen, Jason Lord, and Isabel Lu

Luke Buchanan is a painter and mixed media artist based in Raleigh, NC. With a formal education in architecture from the NC State College of Design, Buchanan explores change in the built environment, alongside the histories and memories represented by buildings and public spaces. A recent year-long project captured the changing seasons of the large ginkgo tree in Dix Park. This work led to the inspiration for his newest mural, scheduled to be installed on the McBride building, a short distance from the tree. Buchanan’s work as a painter has been recognized nationally and internationally, including features in New American Paintings, Both Ways American-Moroccan Artist Exchange, and Highlights in Contemporary North Carolina Painting at the NC Museum of Art. His public works include a number of murals throughout the triangle area. Buchanan has been a studio artist at Anchorlight in Raleigh since 2016.

Learn more about Luke

Jason Lord is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, and educator based in Durham. Using an expansive toolbox of materials, processes, and strategies for thinking and making, he investigates systems—how meaning emerges through relationships among parts, how structure and constraint shape experience, and how material processes can generate new forms of understanding. His work moves fluidly across media, often grounded in repetition, accumulation, and embodied inquiry. Lord holds an MFA in Studio Art from UNCG and a BFA in Studio Art from UNC-CH. He has received fellowships and support from the McColl Center, the Vermont Studio Center, the Hambidge Center, and the Andy Warhol Foundation. Jason's work at Dix Park begins with the conditions of the site itself: an active maintenance building within a landscape shaped by both care and confinement. His project will ask how objects, systems, and spaces carry traces of use, and how those traces can be reconfigured to register both presence and absence. 

Learn more about Jason

Raleigh-based artist Isabel Lu unpacks binary ideas of the diagnosis, remedy, and the body in their work. Their educational background in nutritional science, public health, and dietetics informs their artistic practice. Isabel’s work has been exhibited across North Carolina and they have attended residences at Artspace, WilderHaven in the Sichuan Province in China, the Peter Bullough Foundation in Virginia, and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center of the Arts in Nebraska. Isabel has numerous awards from South Arts, the Snapdragon Fund, North Carolina Asian Americans Together, and Raleigh Arts. Through figurative painting, zinemaking, and herbalism, their work layers the body with symbols from Western and Eastern medicine, ideology and mythology; Yin & Yang balancing light and shadow, meridians where qi stagnates and circulates, and herbs that offer nourishment and movement.

Learn more about Isabel

About the Project

As part of the ongoing renovation of Dix Park, multiple buildings were recently decommissioned. The selected artists were asked to envision how they might create bold and impactful murals or wall-based installations that could cover both the facades and boarded-up windows of these buildings. Their proposals could include creative attachments of 3D-elements or thoughtful strategies around painting all boarded windows. The first mural installation is slated to begin in May 2026, with final installation concluded by the fall. 

Learn more about art at Dix Park

Timeline

Final art should be installed by Summer 2026.

DateActivity
By March 2026Artists Selected
April 2026Concept Designs Due
May 2026Final Designs Due
Spring/Summer 2026Installation

Contact

 

Jenn Hales
Public Art Project Manager
jenn.hales@raleighnc.gov
 
 

Department:
Parks, Recreation and Cultural Resources
Service Categories:
Raleigh ArtsParks
Related Services:
Public Art

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