‘This neighborhood deserves color.’ One of Ohio’s largest murals emerges in Cleveland

By Michelle Jarboe

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    CLEVELAND, Ohio (WEWS) — On Cleveland’s East Side, a forbidding brick wall is now a canvas.

With a paint sprayer and aerosol cans, artists are creating one of the largest murals in the state. Their work surface stretches 728 feet along Woodhill Road, on the perimeter of a Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority bus maintenance garage.

For years, that wall has been a barrier at the bottom of a hill in the Buckeye-Woodhill neighborhood. Now, it’s a brightly colored billboard showcasing the history and culture of a community that’s going through big changes.

“This is a chance to memorialize some areas that we won’t see again – or, at least, we’ll see them again in a different way,” said Ahlon Gonzalez, who grew up nearby and still lives just a few minutes away. “So I think there is a sense of urgency there.”

Gonzalez is managing the mural project for LAND Studio, a nonprofit focused on public art and public spaces. The work, funded by federal grants, is being carried out in partnership with Burten, Bell, Carr Development Inc. and a group of local stakeholders.

And it’s heavily informed by people who live in the area, from retirees who have been in the neighborhood for decades to the children whose small sketches will be hidden, like Easter eggs, in some of the pictures.

“The kids can see themselves in the piece and go point at something that’s gonna be here for 20, 30 years,” said Derek Brennan, one of the lead artists.

The mural is part of a much broader vision, called Elevate the East, for spreading art across several city neighborhoods. The target area runs from East 72nd Street to East 140th Street between Woodland and Kinsman avenues.

Woodhill Road slices through the center of that footprint. The brick wall sits just west of a sprawling public housing complex that the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority and the Community Builders, a nonprofit real estate developer, are replacing.

The massive redevelopment involves razing the 487-unit Woodhill Homes, one of the nation’s oldest public housing projects, and building mixed-income rental housing on the site and nearby land.

Construction started in 2022, and the first new apartment building opened this year.

More than two dozen organizations are part of the push to revitalize the area, helped by $45 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The project also will include a health clinic and an early childhood education center, along with renovations to existing homes and programs to help residents find jobs and education.

All that development and demolition added momentum to the mural project. But Gonzalez said something needed to happen to the blank wall, no matter what.

“I think this is overdue,” she said. “It’s so brown over here. It’s like people don’t think that housing developments need public art.”

On Monday, she braved the drizzle to walk the length of the mural, a series of images broken up by strips of reddish brick.

There’s a carousel horse, a nod to an old amusement park that once stood nearby. A painting of that public housing complex. Depictions of roller skating and relaxing at nearby recreation facilities. Cookouts and haircuts and an RTA train passing by.

“It doesn’t have to be some extravagant sort of situation,” she said. “It’s just people playing basketball. People riding their bikes. Black people, from this neighborhood.”

Passing drivers slow down and pause to take pictures.

“People are honking their horns. They are stopping their cars. They’re just elated to see color,” Gonzalez said. “This neighborhood deserves color.”

The artists said they’re probably 10 to 12 days away from completing the mural. They’ve been painting from 8:30 in the morning until sunset, with the occasional nighttime session to map out some of the more intricate images.

“It keeps getting better as we work on it,” said Chad Fedorovich, the other lead artist on the project. “Kind of chiseling away at some of the details and the colors.”

Fedorovich and Brennan, who live in Cleveland, are working with four other local artists: Dayz Whun, Christa Freehands, Alicia Vasquez and Isaiah Williams.

They’re leaving only one section of the wall untouched. In 2022, a 50-foot-long mural was installed in the middle, across from Mt. Carmel Road. That artwork, by Stina Aleah and Bob Peck, will stay and eventually be touched up.

Brennan hopes the expansive mural will inspire kids in the neighborhood to consider careers in art. He realized early on, at age 10, that he wanted to be an artist.

He started out drawing caricatures at Cedar Point. Then, his first mural opportunity came along.

“That led to another one, and led to another one,” he said. “It just started snowballing. I just started falling in love with public art. … It’s accessible to people. It’s not pretentious. It becomes part of a community.”

In Buckeye-Woodhill, that brick wall is now becoming a mirror, brightening up a long, dull stretch of street and reflecting the life and hopes of the surrounding neighborhood.

“I think sometimes it takes one of these projects, and the impact that it makes, to really see why public art matters,” Gonzalez said.

“We want to do community events around this wall,” she added. “We want to celebrate this wall. We’re planning a huge unveiling of sorts.”

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