LBW 2025: The Urban Bloom of a Living Canvas
Written by Brian Bloss
Published on August 19th, 2025
Marking a tradition spanning 10 years, the annual Long Beach Walls festival certainly isn’t blowing bubbles, it’s painting them 10 ft tall. As Brian Peterson meticulously works on his mural of a young girl surrounded by iridescent bubbles, his swing stage gently drifts in the wind suspended above downtown Long Beach. Reaching for new heights at over 80 feet high and 30 feet across the piece is the tallest mural in the history of the festival. The massive mural definitely adds a splash of color to the skyline of a harbor town which was once better known for shipping containers than street art. The tender yet towering artwork covers the entire face of the Downtown Long Beach Marriott.
Peterson’s work is just one of the many murals added this year to the over 140 murals created since the festival’s inception. This year 12 local and international artists contributed to the city. The power and intrinsic effect of the festival leaves an indelible mark on everyone it touches. It’s incredibly unique for a city to have such an embracing attitude toward street art, but Mayor Rex Richardson seems to have a firm understanding of the power art can have in a community.
“Long Beach Walls has become a cornerstone of our city’s cultural identity,” he said, “For ten years, it has brought together artists and residents to create something lasting. These murals reflect our values, our diversity, and our vision for the future. This festival enhances the beauty of our neighborhoods, strengthens our civic pride, supports our creative economy, and puts Long Beach on the map as a leading arts and culture destination both in California and beyond.”
The murals of Long Beach connect artist with the city but also people to each other. It’s a message that resonates with Brian Peterson’s work, “No matter what you’re doing, I don’t care if you’re a doctor or an aerospace engineer. At the end of the day, life comes down to… it was all about people.” The even greater question at the core of his life and work is, “Did you learn to love? Did you learn to love those people?”
“For ten years, it has brought together artists and residents to create something lasting. These murals reflect our values, our diversity, and our vision for the future.
Peterson often celebrates individuals through portraiture. Many of his murals include famous faces such as Dr. King, Frida Kahlo, and even the iconic mural of Kobe Bryant on the side of the Dolby Theater, “You can interpret someone’s face in a million different ways and so I think because of that my art can speak differently to everyone who sees it.”
The former car designer first came into Long Beach Walls as an observer. Peddling his bike along the streets looking at the art he was inspired by the scale and the expressive freedom. The experience awakened a dream in him, “Everybody has a dream.” Peterson mused, “Where they’re like, I had this idea once but then I got a job, but then I had a family, but then someone told me it was a bad idea. All these things that happened to us in life. I hope this image of this child and the idea of chasing these fleeting moments; and your bubble might burst, but that doesn’t mean there’s not another one right behind it for you to chase.”
The towering image stretching into the Long Beach skyline is a monument of hope and possibility, “So, chase those things, and don’t let them slip out of your grasp. And they might pop sometimes, but other times you might be able to take hold of that one bubble and maybe change the world.”
LBW continues to bring vibrant colors and artists to every corner of the city. In an alley next to a barber shop Eric Michael paints an exotic pair of birds of paradise with vivid detail. The birds are native to his homeland in Venezuela and serendipitously found fluttering around Long Beach as well. By painting them for the festival he pays tribute to his heritage, his new home, and his own personal journey from Venezuela. The bustling street full of pedestrians and passerbys stopping to take pictures and share their admiration for the work.
Meanwhile at Renaissance High School many young minds are about to plant the seeds of their own creative journey. The school is becoming something of a staple of the LBW program and those lucky enough to attend will be greeted by 3 new large-scale murals this year. One of the muralists is Angie Crabtree whose work primarily focuses on the beauty and opulence of luxury.
Many of Crabtree’s pieces contain intricate and richly painted gemstones and her piece at the school is no exception, featuring a floor to ceiling rectangular-faceted gem. While on the surface her paintings seem to celebrate the glamor of extravagance, underneath she is acutely aware of some of the more controversial aspects of the subject, “All the things that are in the paintings give people opportunities to start conversations about ‘why do we want these things’ and ‘what is the real value of these things?’”
She’s content to have her work in front of young students who will be confronted with the dilemma of aesthetics versus value. Even though she questions the conception of wealth and worth, she still enjoys the artistry of these objects of desire and investigates them fervently, “I’ve seen stones from 10,000 dollars up to 40 million dollars. I’ve seen crazy things. I’ve held them in my hands and I can say yes they are extremely beautiful. They weren’t as beautiful when they came out of the ground but they were a collaboration between man and nature and they faceted this gemstone and made it this big sparkly object.” She has a distinct appreciation for purple and green gemstones, which is fitting considering her piece at Renaissance is a large multifaceted purple gem held by gold prongs, which also happens to be the colors of the school.
Renaissance isn’t the only school receiving a creative revitalization. A few miles away Lowell elementary is also getting a fresh coat of paint. Near the basketball courts the generously talented Steve Martinez paints a series of hyper realistic birds that feel like they are almost bursting off the wall.
One of Steve’s favorite birds to paint is the Spotted Towhee. It’s a bird that like him carries the history of migration. The bird travels from Guatemala to Canada which bears an uncanny resemblance to his own family’s trajectory. To him the bird represents, “the freedom to come and go like before there were borders, before there were kings and monarchies and presidents.” It’s a story as old as time yet somehow seems extremely relevant today. “It’s a natural phenomenon, we migrate to survive. Europeans did it, Native Americans did it. It’s just a natural phenomenon.” His wall consists of corrugated wooden boards which give a strikingly naturalistic and rustic feel to the work.
On the reverse side of the building Brady Smith paints an equally diametric but no less invigorating piece. Brady’s process is one of intuition and spontaneity utilizing bright colors and organic shapes. There is very little preplanned before the start of his process. “The result of keeping it instantaneous kind of feeds into the fun energy when people look at it,” he told me, “It’s less regimented and more off the cuff, and I feel like people can sense that, and it’s a little bit more fun.” After an initial color blocking he adds a layer of bold, kinetic, almost Keith Haring-esque lines that form what he calls, “adorable chaos.”
The lines are a stream of consciousness coalescing into eccentric characters such as a one-legged dolphin with high heels, or a walking burrito. “I like the fact that when people look at the art and look at the paintings, they can stay there and stare at it for a long time and walk away and still not have seen everything because there’s so much going on.” The playful nature of his work especially lends itself well to schools, “I’ve done a couple schools, the teachers are actually very grateful to me because they’re like ‘find the walking carrot with the boombox’ and the kids will be quiet looking at something and not acting up for a few minutes.” Because Brady isn’t following a specific plan, his murals are open to spontaneous contributions from the public and he often incorporates ideas people throw at him on the street. It’s an aspect he finds to be a lot of fun, “especially when there’s kids involved because they’ll be like, ‘Paint a narwhal with a slice of pizza on his horn’ or whatever and then every time that kid walks by that mural he’s like, ‘Hey, you see that narwhal slice of pizza on the horn, that’s me.’” It’s an infectious attitude that appeals to young and old alike. “I love that it’s a large scale piece of art that people in the community can look around and kind of have a little bit of their own escapism while they’re staring at it.”
Each piece that LBW brings to the city adds to the greater picture of the community of Long Beach. The creation of artwork in public spaces is a way to let people know “someone cares about this place,” Hannah Web, aka the Obanoth, told me. Hannah also lent her talents to creating a mural at Renaissance high, along with other notable artists around the city including: Candy Kuo, Coco.Nella, B1N4RY, Balloonski, and Alexis Neumann. It’s true that a well conceived mural can make any space more inviting and the contributions of this year’s artist will likely serve to enrich this community for years to come.
The paint of this year’s festival is now dry and the artwork will endure for what will hopefully be many years. Adding a new layer of color to the city of Long Beach and pushing one step further in becoming one of the most vibrant and creatively diverse cities along California’s coast. In its ten year journey Long Beach Walls has evolved from a mural program to a living canvas whose walls are literally reshaping the identity of the city itself.
To check out the full list of artist and mural locations visit:
Brian Bloss is a Los Angeles based artist, writer, and photographer. He enjoys long walks on the beach and anything wrapped in bacon.
