Organizers of a new project opening this week hope to rekindle the glory days of department store windows back downtown.
The Storefronts Winston-Salem project puts artistic displays in underused window spaces along Fourth Street.
The first six installations will be unveiled Friday. Program coordinator Cynthia Marvin says the project joins together visual artists with local poets and she says the artwork will bring life to downtown.
“There are a lot of vacant storefronts," she says. "There are also some windows – they may be an occupied building but instead of retail space it's office space, so there's not a lot of interaction with the pedestrian or with the people driving by.”
Zac Trainor is one of the artists selected to participate in the Storefronts project. He chose to do a depiction of the poem “Rumors” by former Piedmont Laureate Jaki Shelton Green. Trainor paints and does installation artwork. He says he enjoys the amount of creative freedom of the project.
“For me it's about trying to bring an installation that you would typically see set inside a gallery space to the storefront, but also give it the elements it needs to be public art and be street art. So [it's] kind of a merger between both of my worlds,” he says.
The poems used in the project come from the Winston-Salem Writers' Poetry In Plain Sight program. The art installations will be on view through Oct. 30.
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