Civic consciousness guides Art X Love business model
by Sheldon Ocker
Did you hear about honoring Akron’s history with a statue of a rubber worker?
Art X Love is in on it.
How about the deck of cards depicting Akron landmarks to raise money for local artists struggling during the pandemic?
Art X Love is in on it.
Exactly what is Art X Love? It is a commercial art firm owned by Mac and Allyse Love that has operated since December out of the Garth Andrew Building at 1969 N. Cleveland-Massillon Road in Bath.
“We consider ourselves a creative art agency,” Mac said. “We do everything from private commissions to full exhibitions to public art installations.”
Creating art for art’s sake is almost beside the point of much of what Art X Love does. Making urban spaces more livable and friendlier, often one neighborhood at a time, has been the agency’s focus lately.
Art X Love uses Geographic Information System studies to map out various features of a given neighborhood, or maybe an entire city “then we come up with a long term strategy to improve the quality of life and change behavior,” Mac said.
What does all of that mean? Mac and his crew walked every sidewalk in the Buckeye-Shaker neighborhood of Cleveland, cataloguing each broken piece of concrete, every uneven section of sidewalk, anything that would inhibit walking.
“I saw people in wheelchairs using the street because the sidewalks were so bad,” Mac said.
Art X Love reports its findings and recommendations to city government and neighborhood improvement organizations, but what does that have to do with art? Mac considers public displays of art part of the solution to many neighborhood problems.
He and Allyse have directed the acquisition of murals – some executed by children and finished off by professional artists — that have been installed on vacant outdoor walls of businesses which agree to display them.
“It’s inspirational and transformative – where you can actually install something beautiful to lift people’s eyes up and give then hope,” Mac said.
Art X Love conducted a walking tour of 400 Akron streets and ended up mounting 100 murals. He said three neighborhoods received $250,000 grants each one month after his project was completed.
The project begun by Akron resident Miriam Ray to honor the city’s legacy as the center of the nation’s tire industry will culminate with the placing a statue of a rubber worker within the newly constructed roundabout at Main and Mill streets downtown.
Art X Love is playing a part in the undertaking by collecting stories of former rubber company employees and their families, which will be located in a kiosk at the corner of Main and Mill.
“We’ve been recording stories for the past 18 months,” Allyse said.
Mac initiated the idea of portraying Akron landmarks and iconic businesses on a deck of playing cards as a way to subsidize the income of local artists during the pandemic.
“I got to thinking, ‘I bet there are lots of artists who have done work for local businesses,”’ Mac said. “What if we could get these artists’ works and put them on a deck of playing cards and sell the cards as a way to make money for the artists?”
Between Thanksgiving and the end of December, the sale of the cards raised $18,000 for local artists. Art X Love has sold 4,700 decks of 5,000 printed. Mac has ordered 1,000 more decks, and next year he plans to produce a second edition of the cards.
Max and Allyse started Art X Love in 2015 in downtown Akron but were forced to move because their building was undergoing renovation. They have welcomed the move to the Garth Andrew Building, which houses the longtime interior design firm.
“This building on this corner has so much creative history and legacy to it,” Mac said. “It really makes a world of difference for us to move into a place where you don’t have to create that awareness from scratch, where there’s some appreciation of excellence in design and art.” ∞
Feature Image Photo Caption: Allyse and Mac Love opened Art X Love in the former Garth Andrews building. Photo by S. Ocker