Oil City
transplant Charlie Whipple is convinced that if he can get you in the door
by way of elegant woodwork and aromatic tingles, he just might sell you
one of his paintings.
The test will
come today when the 54-year-old Whipple, an artist from Alaska who was
lured to the city with a rash of financial incentives and a hefty dose of
nostalgia for his rural roots, opens up the Howling Dog Gallery and Café
on Seneca Street.
“This is my
retirement. I had to get them into the gallery so I needed something, like
coffee, to bring them in,” said the affable Whipple. “And I named it the
Howling Dog because I didn’t want people to think it’s elite. Anyone will
feel comfortable coming in here.”
Whipple is
the first major success story in the city’s year-old artist relocation
project, aimed at enticing artists to set up shop in Oil City.
Wistfully
eyeing a return somewhere near his native western New York, he bandied
around a few ideas of where to establish his art studio and came across
Oil City’s new project.
Conversations
with Joanne Wheeler, coordinator of the city’s arts relocation program,
led him to town. Her persistence and insistence eventually landed a
business deal. The process from a passing interest to a bills-paying
shopkeeper took a full year.
Whipple’s
business, awash with Victorian-style wood accents from beams to
coffee-for-two tables, is located in the former Klivan’s Jewelry Store.
The three-story building has a fitting dog-in-the-name tenant, the Yellow
Dog Restaurant, at the rear and an upstairs apartment filled with Whipple
children and grandchildren.
While the
Howling Dog walls are filled with Whipple’s paintings, ones that run the
range from realism to abstract art, the shelves are lined with apothecary
jars filled with exotic teas and coffees. Pastries, produced by Clark’s
Donuts, are on the menu, too. A shiny, towering expresso machine stands at
the ready on the counter. A kitchen in the back will eventually yield
soups and sandwiches once Whipple gets in the rhythm of things.
Whipple, a
retired Navy seaman, has combined several talents in his new operation. He
is a cook, courtesy of restaurant experience and a yen for cooking; he is
an artist, a talent he discovered at age 40; he is a businessman, owning
an art gallery in Alaska; and he is a gabber, a social man who has made
friends up, down and across the street where he intends to run a business.
“The beauty
of it is this — to find this in northwestern Pennsylvania is like being
home. I’m, doing everything I wanted to do in a part of the country where
I wanted to be,” Whipple said, standing beside his father Ashton Whipple,
a watercolorist and retired marketing man who shares that he and his wife
once lived for seven years on their 27-foot-long sailboat.
Conversations
of that ilk flow easily around workmen putting the final touches on the
interior, an indication that the atmosphere in Whipple’s new place is
already established.
Whipple’s
café, with seating for 26, has required money and manpower in its
transformation from empty store to open business. Part of Wheeler’s job
was to line up financial incentives and those ranged from low-interest
loans to small grants. The expenditure has reaped benefits before the café
doors opened, said Wheeler.
“You measure
what money is coming into the city and, in this case, it is going to
contractors, to the bank, the suppliers involved with the café. It’s a
great return on the investment,” said Wheeler, adding she anticipates the
first “relocated artist” will draw others to the city. “We are doing
everything we can to bring downtown Oil City back.”
For Whipple,
who will work at the café along with various family members who “have all
come home to roost with me,” the Howling Dog offers him a gallery in which
to sell his art, a coffee shop in which people can schmooze, and the
opportunity to celebrate his regional roots.
“Without
being pretentious, I’m selling affluence and nostalgia,” Whipple said,
gesturing to the fine wood accents, the gourmet coffees and teas, the
original artwork. “For a buck-fifty, you can be in the middle of an art
gallery with all these wonderful aromas — it uplifts you and as you walk
out the door, you can say, ‘life is good.’”