19 Inspired LBC artists create murals about climate change

Murals about climate change were painted onto the walls and pillars of a floor of the Icehouse Arts Complex for the two-day Sea Clearly exhibit on Friday, Feb. 21 and Saturday, Feb. 22.

The Icehouse got its name from its history as a giant freezer used to store ice in the 1920s, and is the future site of TransparentSea Farm, Long Beach’s first urban shrimp farm. The urban farm plans to provide sustainably raised shrimp reared in recycled, purified water to the local area. This method of shrimp farming reduces the need to import shrimp from other countries, cutting down on environmental emissions associated with overseas shipping.

TransparentSea Farm organized the event along with the Aquarium of the Pacific, the media company Inspired LBC and more. Besides the artwork, drinks were available for purchase from Trademark Brewing and local artist BLKNOISE performed for the crowd.

Nineteen artists affiliated with Inspired LBC created artwork for Sea Clearly around the theme of climate change. Organizers kept the prompt open to interpretation, in order not to limit the creativity of the artists, but grouped murals together based on three sub-categories.

“We wanted to have a few murals about hope, [as] you can see in this area here,” TransparentSea Farm founder Steve Sutton said about the murals. “Before people leave, we don’t want them to be crying, we want them to have some hope. […] There’s murals about greenhouse gas as well, and then this wall is kind of [about the] general effects of climate change. We let [the artists] go [ahead] when they found something they liked. A lot of them seem to really have taken to the sea-levels rising concept, and also ice melting.”

[aesop_image img=”https://signaltribunenewspaper.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Sea-mural-2020.jpg” panorama=”off” credit=”Kristen Farrah Naeem | Signal Tribune” align=”center” lightbox=”on” captionsrc=”custom” caption=”A portrait of the young environmentalist Greta Thunberg was included in artist JayJay Linayao’s, known as Jay2tatts, mural for Sea Clearly.” captionposition=”left” revealfx=”off” overlay_revealfx=”off”]

Among the Inspired LBC muralists whose work appeared on a wall at Sea Clearly was Kat Bing. Her mural on climate change depicts four figures huddled around a plant stalk that is sprouting the earth, using only shades of black, white, red and blue.

“It depicts four beings of the universe observing a planet carefully and they appear captivated and concerned,” a hung description of Kat Bing’s mural read. “The planet rests on a stem and appears to be blooming. They’re in space. These four beings represent the universe and the ‘gods’ concerned and rooting for our planet. They also represent us. Because that’s why we’re doing this project. And that’s why people are coming to this event. We’re all trying to come up with solutions to the environmental problems we face. And we’ll succeed if we all work together and keep the information and conversations flowing.”

Before creating the mural, Bing studied research on environmentally sustainable living and the growing population.

“It was super overwhelming because it’s about feeding the growing population,” Bing said of the research that led to her mural. “It involves six huge things. One of them is aquaponics, vertical farming and eating a lot less meat. I didn’t want to write it all on here, so I decided to do something that is a little optimistic, like the universe is rooting for us. They’re like, ‘We gave you consciousness and fingers, so figure this out.’ You could do anything, all those solutions are right in front of us.[…] There are solutions, we just have to figure out how to work together.”