The Long Beach Walls and Art Renzei festival (formerly known as Pow! Wow! Long Beach) brings artists from all around the world to Long Beach every summer to “bring art and culture to public spaces while beautifying the city of Long Beach and cultivating community pride.”
Since 2015, this ever-expanding cast of artists has created more than 100 murals and art installations throughout the city during this annual, week-long event put on by the local nonprofit Creative Class Collective.
This year’s festival is underway now, running from July 20 to 26. You can see a map of upcoming murals and events here. But while they’re in progress, we decided to take a look back at a few pieces from previous years you’ve probably gotten used to seeing in your daily lives.
Here’s the story behind them.
Wire sculptures with lives of their own
A longtime San Diego resident, Spenser Little was brought to Long Beach in 2018 for the Thinkspace Gallery international street art exhibit at the Long Beach Museum of Art.
Since then, Little has placed over 200 wire sculptures, made from thin iron wires or steel bars, throughout Long Beach. And he’s been a repeat participant in Long Beach Walls and Art Renzie over the years.
While a lot of Little’s sculptures are satirical, his most notable pieces in Long Beach have different themes.
The first piece Little installed here was a pair of feminine faces attached to a light post in Bluff Park overlooking Junipero Beach. Many pieces Little has placed in Long Beach have been stolen, he said, but this first piece is still there.
For this one, there’s no particular message. The feminine faces on the bluff were purely ornamental for Little.
“I guess I was feeling pretty and just wanted to powder my nose a little bit that day,” Little said.
But a more recent installation has a much more personal meaning. Last year, Little made a 15-foot by 12-foot sculpture in memory of his friend Shawn Hosner, who died of breast cancer about a month before her 58th birthday. This one hangs on a light post in Downtown near the Edison Theatre.
Little says street art is freeing for him.
“When I leave art in public, I’m not thinking at all about who’s going to see it. I’m not thinking at all about what money it’s going to bring me. I’m just doing it to leave a little offering in an unconfined public space that’s meant for free consumption and spontaneous interaction,” Little said.
What happens next is out of his hands: “When I put a sculpture out in public, it’s that object’s 18th birthday, and I say goodbye to that object, and it lives its own life,” he said.
Inspiration on the side of a parking structure
On the side of a parking garage on West Alta Way, you’ll find Lula Goce’s mural of a woman surrounded by red streaks and flowers.
Goce is from Spain but came to Long Beach to do this mural through the Long Beach Walls and Art Renzei festival last year. Goce said she felt complete freedom during the process, and with that, she “allowed [herself] to be inspired by the beauty of feminine features.”
Goce said her work draws from the art and history of Spain.
“I strive to approach and study the human figure, applying a touch of magical realism in a fantastical universe,” Goce said.
This particular mural was improvised. When she arrived in Long Beach for the festival, she discovered the wall originally reserved for her to paint on had fallen through, meaning she had to quickly pivot and make a sketch for her new wall on the spot.
Going from a sketch in her sketchbook to painting on the side of a building is the hardest part for Goce.
“I am extremely perfectionistic, and the shift in scale from paper to a building façade is no easy task. Both physically and mentally, being on a crane 20 meters high, with the sun beating down or in the rain, is challenging,” she said. “Every mural is a new test.”
She said she can’t wait to paint in Long Beach again. “There is a very good energy.”
An image of healing outside police headquarters
Near the corner of Broadway and Chestnut Avenue, just across from the Long Beach Police Department’s downtown station, is a building-sized portrait of a woman surrounded by vibrant colors. This is “The Butterfly Hug,” created in 2019 by Syrian artist Dina Saadi.
The piece depicts a woman performing what’s called a butterfly hug, a bilateral stimulation method of rhythmic tapping that was created by psychotherapist Lucina Artigas to help people process trauma.
“Mental health and therapy is one of the topics that I believe should be highlighted more, especially now more than ever with our modern lifestyle and the massive influence of technology on people’s lives,” Saadi said.
Mental health is a common theme in Saadi’s work.
“I create art to spread happiness in public spaces, inspiring mental well-being, while encouraging people to connect with their true selves and nature, seeking inner peace and balance,” Saadi said.
Saadi said she uses a lot of contrast in her art. In “The Butterfly Hug,” she said, “It’s the combination of the black-and-white realistic portrait with the vibrant, abstract elements (drawn from nature and urban life) that gives the work its bold yet balanced impact.”
Mixing organic and geometric elements with vivid colors and bold patterns, her work aims to highlight the interconnection between “the natural and man-made worlds,” while exploring themes of identity and nature.
Saadi has painted over 150 murals around the world and made her second piece in Long Beach, a feminine face surrounded by bright-colored coral, in 2023 at the Long Beach Convention Center.