A mural meant to inspire and relate with local residents is coming soon to West Long Beach, paying homage to the area’s work ethic, families, faith and student success.

Long Beach artist José Loza, who’s worked on more than 20 murals, including the “Wanderer” and “Presencia de lo invisible” in North Long Beach, designed the concept, pulling input from Centro CHA, the nonprofit that organized the project, as well as the Long Beach Economic Partnership and other local business leaders.

Poised with this difficult task, Loza needed to balance three themes that would live within the mural.

“It’s always challenging for me because I’m always trying to find the connections,” he said.

For starters, organizers wanted the Virgin Mary in there, so Loza made her the foreground at the top of the mural. Residents “look to her for protection and prayer,” said Jessica Quintana, executive director of Centro CHA.  There’s also a large Filipino population in the area, a demographic that’s also largely Catholic—something that she said she kept in mind. It’s also notable that Loza took a non-traditional approach of illustrating the Virgin Mary horizontally, making space for the other elements.

Quintana, who grew up on the westside, said that many residents are gardeners, largely from immigrant communities, and organizers wanted to reflect that industry through a depiction of two children planting a glowing rose bush while also surrounded by the desert plants often seen in the neighborhood.

Aside from the “multi-layered symbolism” of the children planting and representing the future, to him, they are the “center of community.”

“When you’re walking around your neighborhood and hear kids playing in their yards, playing on the streets, it brings a positive feeling to you,” he said.

Lastly, two people dressed in graduation gowns—one wearing a sarape-patterned sash—look upward, which Quintana said reflects student graduates who were from high school or college,  epitomizing “hope” for better futures across generations.

While it’s always hard synthesizing a concept with many elements, “you kind of do the best you can,” Loza said about designing the mural.

“Yeah, I think you always feel pressure,” he said about creating murals for the community.

“This mural is not going to be the one mural for everybody,” he said “It just kind of has to exist at this point in time.” But he plans to be receptive to what locals say about it. In past projects, he’s changed colors, added elements or used residents as models for faces in his murals, an inclusive idea he may repeat on this one.

Quintana reached out to Loza and other partners to plan to make this happen.

“The goal and the vision of this project was to bring beautification to West Long Beach,” Quintana said. The few existing murals on the westside are now old and faded. Plus, she added, “there’s not too many Latino inspired murals” on that side of town. This is why organizers of the mural needed to take a look at the values and customs of the diverse, but still mostly Latinx, community.

“It’s like, wow, we never had anything like this before,” she said.

Long Beach resident Brisa Gonzalez Cortina, who will have the mural painted on her business, Gonzalez Tax & Insurance, said she was touched by the idea of showcasing graduates. Gonzalez Cortina said it will show that people of color can “be something more” than just negative stereotypes of, say, being Latinx.

The graduates are “representing that there’s no limit,” she said.

Normally, Loza said he would want to do a busy community paint day, but during the pandemic, he and Centro CHA plan on scheduling times for painting via social media as a means to maintain social distancing. (Up to three or four people painting at a time, he said.) While Loza just started on the mural, Wednesday, volunteers are welcome to help beginning on Saturday, Dec. 12. He and his partners will be unveiling the finished mural on Jan. 9, 2021.

While the first West Long Beach mural this winter is heavy on geometric shapes and leans more toward the abstract, this one showcases a culture.

“The cool thing is that there’s so many walls, there’s so many stories that do need to go up,” Loza said. Hopefully, there can be more murals because “we need to build up and to talk about the narratives about the diversity” in the community.

“I’m really excited because this is something overdue on the westside,” Gonzalez Cortina said.

The mural site is located on 2000 Santa Fe Ave.