Sara Steele, a self-taught artist, poses in front of a 2025 mural she created outside a West Market Street retail store.
Sara Steele, a self-taught artist, poses in front of a 2025 mural she created outside a West Market Street retail store. (Photo courtesy of Hillary Miceli)

How did a woman wearing a puffy, green tulle dress and black combat boots find herself posing upside down under a flower mural on West Market Street?

The short answer: Ice cream pays her bills, and art saves her soul.

The longer explanation includes a rewind to the COVID pandemic. A friend needed an ice cream truck driver. Sara Steele needed a job. 

Fate added the sprinkles.

“Most positive, happy job I ever had,” Steele said.

This self-taught artist set aside her paintbrushes to cruise Akron’s many neighborhoods, serving up scoops, flavored syrups, whipped cream and the universal soundtrack of summer joy.

Fast forward to 2025. Steele owns five ice cream trucks. And she’s getting back to art. 

Akron in 330

The jewel of Akron is its people. They’re vibrant and resilient. Flawed, yet thoughtful and nurturing. And all of them come with compelling stories. That’s why we launched “Akron in 330.” This series offers a glimpse into everyday folks’ journeys across our many neighborhoods — 330 words at a time. Know someone we should consider? Tell us here.

Leaf Home and Blooms, a retail store that specializes in flowers, gifts and plants, is the site of the first in Steele’s pop art series. The exterior wall of the business at 449 W. Market St. is decorated with roses, a bird of paradise, lavender, lily of the valley, tulips, dahlias, daffodils, sunflowers, gladiolus, daylilies, cactuses and spider plants. Bold outlines give the mural a graphic, pop-art-esque feel. 

She spent 84 hours painting — one month and more than 15 gallons of paint. The primer? Five gallons. 

No art is complete without Instagrammable images. So her cousin, photographer Hillary Miceli, captured the artist’s personality, English-flavored fashion sensibility and joyful eccentricity.

Sara Steele spent 84 hours creating the pop-art–inspired mural outside an Akron retail store.
Sara Steele spent 84 hours creating the pop-art–inspired mural outside an Akron retail store. (Photo courtesy of Hillary Miceli)

Steele’s next loud and bright mural is already in the works. She plans to climb to the second story of the newly opened Leaf Home and Blooms location on Main Street in downtown Kent. On West Market, she used scaffolding; in Kent, she plans to stand on the roof of the building next door. 

Since moving to Akron from Twinsburg in 2022, Steele has made a friend of the city. And she’s not shy about her affection. 

“I’ve never felt more myself than I do since moving, living, creating and belonging in Akron,” Steele, 42, said with a wide smile.

The flowers agree.

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Patricia Sheahan is a professor, student teacher supervisor, installation artist, educational consultant for the integration of the arts across all disciplines and a freelance writer. Sheahan enjoys more than four decades of education experience at K-12 schools in New York and Pennsylvania and higher education at Seton Hill University, the University of Pittsburgh, Duquesne University, Penn State and most recently the University of Akron. Her favorite courses to teach are Social Justice Through the Arts, Ethics, Introduction to Critical Education, Classroom Management and Integrating the Arts K-12. Interests include visiting the Akron Art Museum, Akron Library, Civic Theatre, walking downtown to view murals and window light installations plus the stunning flower and plant arrangements, antiquing, especially from her own vendor space at The Brothers North Antiques in Medina. She also frequents Akron restaurants and local boutiques, travels and spends time with her family; a daughter and her newly blended family in North Canton, a son and his family in San Diego and a son in Dallas.