Much of Mar Vista's Street Art Was Commissioned by the Buildings It's Painted On

Village Car Wash has been on Venice Boulevard since 1964. It's a self-serve wash, open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and you can rinse your car there under murals by Kenny Scharf. The work wasn't commissioned by a museum or a city arts program. According to the Mar Vista Community Council's new self-guided art tour, the grandchildren of the wash's original owners asked Scharf to paint two new murals for the business's 2025 reopening.

The car wash is stop 11 on that map, and it says a lot about the boulevard as a whole. The council's Education, Arts and Culture Committee released "Self-Guided Tour #1: Art on Venice Boulevard" in August 2026. It describes a loop of about 1.2 miles that takes roughly an hour if you start and end at the first stop. The council announced it on August 31, with a version for your phone and one to print. Read the stop descriptions in order and a pattern shows up. Most of the art on Mar Vista's main street was paid for, chosen and maintained by the owners of the walls it's on. The stretch of Venice you drive through every day works less like a public gallery and more like a record of who owned which building and what they wanted on it.

Who Asked for the Paint

DJ Neff describes "Awesome Clouds," his 2017 piece at 12517 Venice, as a client commission. The design grew out of a smiling cloud sign that was already on the property. At 3796 Colonial Avenue, the tour says the building's owner was involved with Beautify Earth and wanted a mural advertising a documentary, so Darin Balaban painted "Deepfaking Sam Altman" in 2025. "Kaleidoscope Kelp" by Evan Meyer is on the same address, a joint project of Beautify Earth and Blue Robotics about kelp forests.

Sometimes the business is part of the artwork. Erika Lane's poem "A Vital Call for Healing," on the "Peace For All" mural at 12207 Pacific, is about cycles and cleaning because the wall is shared with a dry cleaner. At 12503 Venice, murals by Madsteez, Katch1 and Richuno cover the side of the Stohl Building. It was built in 1926 as the Mar Vista State Branch, the neighborhood's first bank.

Where public money is involved, it shows up as a partnership with the street's own institutions. Pieces marked with an asterisk on the map belong to the Downtown Mar Vista Beautification Project, which was developed for Council District 11 and the Los Angeles Neighborhood Initiative with Transformation Arts. The most visible example is DJ Neff's "Love, Mar Vista" at 12120 Venice, a 2019 mural designed like a classic postcard. Each letter stands for part of the neighborhood: M for music, A for arts, R for biking, V for coffee, I for yoga, S for the canals, T for the farmers market and the last A for bowling. In 2026, Neff extensively renovated the wall and the mural with funding from CD-11 and the Mar Vista Farmers Market, and the guide notes that the images are different now. So the market that sets up on Grand View every Sunday helped pay for the postcard that includes it.

Private Walls Can Be Repainted

If the owners commission the art, they can also have it changed, and the map records that too. Jules Muck painted "The United Workers" at 12257 Venice in 2021. The council's tour guide quotes her saying she "was very sad to paint [this], as the owner made me paint over the memorial of [musicians] Lemmy, Bowie and Lou Reed, all of which were painted on or the day after each died." That memorial is gone. The wall now shows what its owner later chose.

Other pieces are designed to change. "Life & Death," on the utility box at Venice and Grand View, is described as "an evolving portrait gallery of influential people we lost and commemorate." Mitchelito Orquiola and Jen Lavita painted the art, and Erika Lane wrote the words. Its portraits have been replaced since the originals went up in 2017, and the most recent was finished in 2024. A few blocks east, Erika Lane's "Little Reminders" utility box at 3790 Ocean View Avenue was touched up after it was tagged in 2024.

The guide invites corrections and suggestions for future sites at [email protected]. For now, a printed map of privately owned walls is a snapshot of how they look this year.

Where the Street Itself Gets a Turn

The smallest pieces are the ones most likely to last. They're painted on infrastructure the city owns, where no single property owner decides what happens to them.

• Streetlights. During the pandemic, artist Erick Reyes installed five "Sacred Flower & Law" medallions on streetlights along Venice. The guide leaves them unnumbered and asks if you can find all five.
• Bike-lane signs. The guide points out "words of wisdom" under the official bike-lane signs along the route. At Venice and Grand View, "Curiosity" by Johnny Cho is an LADOT haiku.
• The library's utility box. Outside the Mar Vista Branch Library at 12006 Venice, Çiğdem Akbay's "A Bad Case of Stripes" is a tribute to David Shannon's children's book and to Mar Vista's history of lima bean farming. Kimberly Karukoh painted the back panel, "Lima Wood."
• The Music Box. On the utility box at the southeast corner of Venice and Wade, Mitchelito Orquiola, Jen Lavita and Nikki Portman painted local musicians, including Citizen Cope, whom the artists describe as a longtime neighbor.

The most intimate stop is in an alley. At 3809 to 3815 Grand View, several artists worked together on the walls, including Erika Lane's poem "What it is to be" and Nikki Portman's "Miles Davis." Portman calls it her first mural for Mar Vista. Lane says the poem "requires you to take a second to stop and read it."

A Sunday Order of Operations

The route is a loop, so you don't have to start at stop 1 on Stewart. Grand View is the easiest place to begin on a Sunday because the Mar Vista Farmers Market runs there from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., at Grand View and Venice Boulevard. This order starts and ends near the market.

1. Start with "Love, Mar Vista" at 12120 Venice. Between 12114 and 12120 Venice, look for the mural by Love Annie, Annie Preece, created for Mission Harbor Behavioral Health.
2. Cross over to Jonas Never's Mar Vista Bowl retrospective at 12125 Venice. It faces Grand View and gives a colorful history of the bowling alley.
3. Walk into the Grand View alley for Lane and Portman, then over to "Peace For All" at 12207 Pacific.
4. Head west past Never's Mar Vista history mural at 12200 Venice, "for marty with love" by Christina Angelina and DJ Neff at 12218, and Mr. B Baby's blue critter Chucho at 12404.
5. Stop at Village Car Wash for the Scharf murals.
6. Keep going west to DJ Neff's cluster. "Elephant," from 2015, at 12511 Venice hides the letters KRUSH in honor of the artist Krush TWS. "Octopus" at 12515 turns a pole into a tank holding a giant Pacific red octopus. At 12523 Venice, the guide suggests looking behind the liquor store for another mural.
7. Finish at the west end with Jessica Shandler's henna-influenced "Coral Reef" at 12623 Venice and Sei Shimura's "Whale Tail" at 3796 Stewart. Both play on the "ocean view" meaning of Mar Vista's name. Then double back toward the market.

You can get dinner along the same stretch. Our Mar Vista dinner map covers the restaurants that have opened nearby.

This Weekend, the Same Idea Moves to the Porches

PorchFest LA runs on the same principle as the murals, with music instead of paint. People offer their own front porches and driveways as stages, and neighbors walk from one to the next. The Westside weekend covering Mar Vista and Culver City is this Saturday and Sunday, October 24 and 25, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. both days. PorchFest LA lists the performances as free and says neighborhood maps will be posted closer to the event. In the meantime, the published Mar Vista and Culver City porch schedule lists Mar Vista porches on both days, including Barry Avenue on Saturday and Wade Street and Grand View Boulevard on Sunday.

Here's how one Saturday porch on Barry Avenue is scheduled:

A second Barry Avenue porch opens at 11 a.m. Saturday with singer-songwriter Andras Jones, followed later by Joey Martin, Carleen and MASHA. Sunday's Mar Vista lineup includes the Mar Vista Marauders and the Superbroke Brass and Tin and Strings Electric Marching Band Ensemble. One Sunday porch is on Grand View Boulevard, so the art loop, the market and a set of live music can all fit into one afternoon. These porches are people's homes, so treat them the way the art guide asks you to treat its walls: don't disturb tenants, and respect private property.

If you own a home on one of these blocks and are weighing how its facade, porch or garden wall faces the street, The Salazar | Bunnell Group can walk the property with you and talk through design and value. Start with our Mar Vista page. Partner With Our Expert Team.