By: Trevor Ing/ Editor In Chief

Stow legend, known to the community as the “Art Lady,” sits on Graham Road in her wheelchair nearly everyday showing drawings with a smile on her face. 

     For the past six years, the Stow community or people who happen to be driving on Graham Road after the Fishcreek intersection, see Forty-seven-year-old Shauna Pope, who sits at the base of the Adult Living Facility holding up pictures of art.

     Pope grew up on the north side of Akron, moving high schools frequently from North, to central, to Wadsworth. Her high school career was filled with positivity and activity, but her life changed on a random day in 1998. 

     “I was walking down the bridge, and I got hit by a vehicle in the back of the head. I fell 150 feet off the bridge, and the cells in my head got severed,” Pope said.

     Pope was a nurse’s assistant for Valley Vue Hospital and was simply walking home, when all of a sudden this accident caused her to enter a coma for 13 days. After she woke up, Pope began seeing visions, many of which would eventually come true.

     “I saw visions in my head, and I saw where I live right now, and it’s weird because I knew I was going to live here,” Pope said. 

     Pope continues to have these visions even today, and instead of just thinking about them, she now puts them on paper.

     “I see cars going by and these beautiful beautiful visions, and I just said, ‘Well, you know what? Let me copy these visions I see on paper and let me draw these people,’” Pope said.

     Funny enough, these people the Pope drew, eventually started to appear in front of her. As if she was seeing the future, almost everyday people who looked very similar to the person she drew that day would come up to her.

     “[One time] I drew a man with purple hair with a pink, green and yellow striped shirt, and the same man walked up to me. He said, ‘This is a nice picture, but how do you know me?’ I looked at him, and I was like, ‘Whoa, what? This looks just like him,’” Pope said. “I was like, ‘Woah, I didn’t know I was drawing you.’”

     This gift Pope was given is something she believes to be truly special, and she gives God credit for her ability, believing in the philosophy: “God gave me a gift, so I’m gonna use it.”

     “God gives you certain things that help you,” Pope said. “Don’t ignore what God gives you in life.”

     Putting her faith in Christianity, Pope lives to uphold one main part of her religion from the Bible: “Love thy neighbor.” Pope upholds this value in the best way she knows how–“just smile.”

     However this was not always the case. Throughout the past six years of showing off her artwork, Pope learned just how powerful a smile really is.

     “Maybe somebody else is going through a bad time or you’re going through a bad time, too. If you smile, it’s not going to go away, but just seeing you smile, you’re going to brighten up their day,” Pope said.

     Along with staying positive, Pope believes people are so caught up in the future that they start to forget about the present. She mentions how she will see people walking around that look like “zombies” because they are so stressed thinking about life. Pope believes this epidemic is starting to make the world a less positive place.

     “Everybody’s going through trouble. Everyone’s going through stress. The whole world’s not happy. The whole world’s down,” Pope said. “I just wish that people would work together. If people would just work together on things it would just make [the world] a better place.”

     In Pope’s perfect vision, she sees the world as one big amusement park where what you look like, what you wear or how you act does not matter at all. A place where everyone joins together to help each other, and where everyone “is their own president.”

     In her park, the color of someone’s skin or race they are does not matter. 

     “Who gives a whoot what color you are. I mean, just be happy with what you are and what you’re given. Life is a gift, so use it,” Pope said.

     Pope wishes for the day the world can become more together and positive as a whole. The one thing she wishes everyone would do is just simply “smile.”

     “Just smile,” Pope said. “Forget about yesterday. Forget about next year. Live for now, not in the past, not in the future but for now.”