Mac Love never noticed the woman watching him work under the Main Avenue Bridge in Cleveland.
The Akron artist, a piece of Crayola chalk in hand, sketched the word “DREAM” about six-feet high on an outdoor wall. Inside each letter, Love then colored a bright blue sky with white clouds fading into purple night with twinkling stars.
The 37-year-old was inspired by poet Maya Angelou saying “be a rainbow in someone else’s cloud” and hoped to show off Northeast Ohio’s creative and peaceful side to the 50,000 people visiting Northeast Ohio during the Republican National Convention.
But the woman watching him a week ago from the parking lot of Ernst & Young was local. When she finally approached Love, it was clear she had been crying, he said.
The woman took a picture of the mural for her younger brother, who planned to protest outside the convention.
“She said she wanted him to see this to know there are positive ways to express yourself, to speak your mind,” Love said. Mac Love — whose chalk murals line the walls along West Ninth Street in the Flats under the bridge — said his proper name is William MacDonald Love. But his family — Scottish on both his mother’s and father’s sides — tradition is to call the first-born son “Mac.”
Love spent much of his childhood in Belgium and has the unusual distinction of always longing to live in Ohio. His father grew up in North Olmsted and passed his passion for Cleveland sports onto his son.
Love worked in branding in New York — he wrote all of the words on Wild Turkey bourbon/whiskey bottle labels.
Love finally moved to Ohio in 2013 after meeting, and later marrying, a woman he met in Manhattan who grew up in Akron, Allyse Treier.
“I’d take one-quarter of the salary to do what I love in Ohio,” Love said.
Here, Love works independently, mostly as an artist.
Thirty-two of his paintings — each 4’x 8’ — hang at Edgewater Park on Lake Erie, commissioned by Cleveland Metroparks.
His Kaleidoscope Garden fills storefront windows inside 5th Street Arcades. They look like stained-glass, but he made them using iridescent paper, ink and acrylic paint.
And in August, he’ll start work on a mural in Akron’s Northside. It will be the backdrop of a new public outdoor space near the bicycle shop.
Those projects were all paid. But the Cleveland chalk murals, Love does for free.
For the Republican convention, his murals reflect the Cavaliers’ championship (Believeland), love, loyalty and a welcome to strangers.
A woman with her daughter, who is about 6, also picked up a piece of his chalk and added the word “Peace.”
Love later sketched a dove flying overtop “Peace” and his message to visiting Republicans, media and others was finished.
Amanda Garrett can be reached at 330-996-3725 or agarrett@thebeaconjournal.com.