Serena Oaks, co-owner of Sew Studio, creates a woven sign Wednesday for her booth at the UpcycleCHQ Community Material Exchange taking place in Bestor Plaza Sunday.
LILY RESLINK
Staff Writer
It has been said that anyone who enters the grounds for even a day becomes a Chautauquan forever. Anyone who comes to Bestor Plaza Sunday afternoon, though, can leave a more tangible legacy: their thread in another Chautauquan’s favorite shirt, extra paint in another’s art or scraps in another’s invention.
In the free and open-to-all Community Material Exchange from noon to 2 p.m. Sunday on Bestor Plaza, Chautauquans can give and take one another’s excess art materials. The event is a culmination of months of collaboration between Chautauqua’s Climate Change Initiative and Upcycle CHQ.
Kenneth Omeruo, CEO and founder of GreenClusta Technologies LLC in Jamestown, New York, launched UpcycleCHQ as an initiative to connect materials, skills and communities across Chautauqua County to locally promote mutually beneficial collaboration and environmentally sustainable reuse practices.
The exchange is “about helping people see opportunities where they may have previously seen waste,” Omeruo said.
Due to limited storage, coordinators noted that participants must reacquire all unclaimed items upon the conclusion of the pop-up event.
Mollie Merchant and Oaks, co-owners of Sew Studio, measure an art piece made out of found brown packing paper in Sew Studio in the back of Spruce Home Decor Wednesday.
The exchange marks UpcycleCHQ’s first physical appearance at Chautauqua Institution.
“We’re bringing together materials, people, skills and ideas in one place because we believe those connections can create new relationships, new projects and even new economic opportunities,” Omeruo said.
Claire Johnson Baker, an independent contractor working with CCI, has supported several expansions to CCI that concern partnerships and stakeholders off-grounds, such as the climate action plan, food rescue program and now, UpcycleCHQ.
“Part of the Climate Change Initiative’s mission is reducing waste,” Baker said. “And I think inspiring creativity when it comes to waste reduction is something that helps further that mission.”
Baker acknowledged that Chautauquans’ seasonal homes may not have all the odds and ends that one’s year-round home might contain, but she said to bring whatever someone could find useful. “It could be a broken dish that somebody turns into a mosaic piece. It could be half a skein of yarn.”
Baker credited UpcycleCHQ with incorporating upcycling into CCI’s mission and enabling programming that supports it. “It’s not something that CCI is actively working on just because of capacity and resource issues,” Baker said. “Kenneth has really spearheaded this.”
According to its contributors, this exchange event is particularly significant in what — and who — it brings together.
In addition to coordinating with Omeruo, Peter Nosler Director of Chautauqua’s Climate Change Initiative Mark Wenzler liaised with Serena Oaks and Mollie Merchant, co-owners of Sew Studio, located in the Colonnade in the back of Spruce Home Decor, to participate in the event.
When Sew Studio opened at the Institution in 2025, Oaks posted to the Chautauqua Grapevine group to announce its existence to the community. Merchant said Wenzler and Baker saw the post and posed the idea to collaborate for a community fair.
Oaks and Merchant said they hope the fair helps Chautauquans become more artistically inspired by materials they already have on hand — something Merchant said she has found a passion for.
“I really felt a spark around being able to be creative at Chautauqua and be creative with other people around materials that are so easily thrown away,” Merchant said.
Oaks said she is excited about the event as a venue to transfer stories along with items. “I think there’s an opportunity for maybe more of those items to be used and repurposed and cherished if there’s a little bit more of that connection that’s stuck with them,” Oaks said.
Following the exchange, Sew Studio will host their weekly “Maker Meetup,” which they invite all community members to attend for free.
Merchant said she is excited for how the exchange will expand the ability for meaningful and beneficial interactions to occur not just within the Institution, but among the greater community.
“I think there’s so much that we offer to one another — in ideas and materials,” she said.
Regarding UpcycleCHQ’s future, Omeruo said, “I also hope this becomes the beginning of a longer relationship where Chautauqua can serve as a place to explore, test and share ideas that other communities can learn from.”
Omeruo said he hopes to see the event inspire a mindset shift from asking how they can get rid of something to asking who else could use it. “If people begin thinking that way, we’ve already achieved something meaningful,” Omeruo said.
