Oneonta Storefront Project Brings New Focal Points to Main Street

By CASSANDRA MILLER
ONEONTA

Several vacant storefronts on Oneonta’s Main Street are filled thanks to the Oneonta Storefront Project. A papier-mâché jungle, carved basswood royalty, a celebration of pregnancy and Oneonta in the 1960s are some of the themes of installations passersby can see in downtown Oneonta this summer.

The brainchild of artist Elizabeth Pereira, the Oneonta Storefront Project is a grassroots initiative that has grown into a collaborative effort to beautify downtown. So far, artists and organizations have created installations for six vacant storefronts, with more planned this summer. Pereira said she hopes the project continues into the fall.

Friends of Recovery of Delaware and Otsego County and the Greater Oneonta Historical Society created installations in adjacent windows at 182 Main Street. GOHS’ window features a display about the 1960s. FOR-DO’s features recovery-themed artwork and several items representing activities they offer to young people at Club Odyssey.

Huntington Memorial Library created a display in one of the former Bresees’ department store windows. Vinyl wings depicting books adorn the front of the window and inside hang real books with paper wings.

“We’re not an arts organization, but we wanted to be a part of it,” said Huntington Memorial Library Director Tina Winstead. “It’s the most fun thing I’ve done in my job all year.”

When hair stylist Beth Ashbaugh asked her client, Pereira, how she could help, she became the project manager of a new collective that calls themselves the “Wild Animals” and includes Ashbaugh, Pereira, Karen Rowe, Jessame Sanders, Morgan Doyle, and Claudia Koeppel. The group used plaster, paper, cheesecloth, silk flowers and chicken wire to create a jungle scene and added jungle-themed art for the former Artware window.

“It was a bucket list for me to do an art installation,” Ashbaugh said, adding that her only experience was creating a window display when she worked at a tuxedo company.

In addition to creative and informational displays are fine art installations.

“Window art, you don’t have to take it too seriously,” Pereira said. “Although I took it seriously.”

She created a sculpture for one of The Working Kitchen’s windows. In Pereira’s “Great Expectations; Superpower,” a full white belly and swollen breasts proudly sit atop a pedestal with three colorful papier-mâché balloons “floating” behind it. When looking at the installation from the side window, you can see the inside of the belly is coated in gold.

“[Motherhood] is just where I’m at. It’s on the surface of my skin,” said Pereira, who shows her art as Elizabeth Wilde.

“I used real gold leaf because it’s real gold,” Pereira said, gesturing to one of her two daughters sitting nearby at a celebration for the project on Thursday, June 27, at Roots Public Social Club.

The sculpture is “celebratory of the expectations of what it’s going to be like to be a mom. It’s all a big party. It’s very exciting when you’re pregnant,” Pereira explained.

To bring her brainchild to life, Pereira, co-owner of her family’s business, Wolf Wilde Goldsmith, joined forces with artist Cynthia Marsh, who was helming a separate effort to create displays in Clinton Plaza at the same time Pereira was calling Main Street landlords to use their vacant spaces for art installations.

Mayor Mark Drnek connected the two artists and introduced them to a third organizer, Celia Reed.

“She is the problem-solver,” Pereira said of Reed.

The three women enlisted landlords, non-profits and artists to be a part of the beautification effort.

“There’re a lot of reasons to love Oneonta and these three are some of them,” Drnek said in a speech at the celebration at Roots.

The first landlord to give Pereira the go-ahead was Stephanie Holmes, owner of The Working Kitchen, which has gone through several years of renovations and is scheduled to open in 2025.

“It’s nice to see something beautiful in the windows and feel like we’re a part of Main Street,” said Holmes, who owns the building with her husband, Chip.

Opposite Pereira’s sculpture are two carved basswood busts titled “The Queen” and “The King” by artist Stefanie Rocknak, a professor at Hartwick College who has shown her art around the world, including at The Smithsonian Museum in Washington D.C. and in Boston Common, where her bronze statue of Edgar Allan Poe is permanently displayed.

Rocknak was the first artist Pereira reached out to after she secured The Working Kitchen’s windows.
“[Rocknak’s] work is of the caliber of these gorgeous windows,” she said.

Rocknak didn’t want to do both windows, so Periera decided to create her motherhood sculpture for the opposite window.

The Working Kitchen’s windows have been used at Christmastime to display “The Nutcracker” ballet costumes for its upstairs neighbor, Fokine Ballet Company. But the soon-to-be showroom’s big black doors hadn’t been opened since the contractors installed them last year.

“The doors opened for the first time to bring the artwork inside,” Holmes said. “Now I really want to open them again. It felt really nice to see them open and to see people looking in windows.”

Holmes said she hopes the project will encourage other landlords and business owners to take an active role in reviving the heart of the city.

“We love downtown and we love to see all the positive energy. It feels so good. There’s so much going on. There’s good energy. We’re lucky to have a Main Street as vibrant as we do,” Holmes said. “We hope this inspires more people to fix up their spaces and rent them and be a part of downtown.”

Cassandra Miller writes about art, culture, and entertainment and is the editor of the “Townie” Substack newsletter.