“We are collaborating with local small businesses, specifically in Lakewood just because they were the community that came to us and initiated this project . They have been inspired by the work of our students are doing; they want to invite those students to come and paint on their walls.”

A month ago Art Director James MacDevitt began the mural project and social media contest on Instagram.

Eight local small businesses allowed art students from Cerritos College to paint murals for their businesses. Ten students in total participated in the art itself.

The way the contest worked was students from Cerrtios College would visit all 8 of these businesses and take a selfie with them. The post them on Instagram with the hashtag #LakeOverMuralProject and they would automatically enter a raffle to win an Apple iPad Air 2.

The eight businesses were:

• Allison Tutoring
• Cassidy’s Corner Cafe
• Labwerkz Prinitshop
• La De Da Salon
• Lakewood Family YMCA
• Neptunes Raw Oysters & Seafood Bar
• North Shore Poke
• YoPlace

Kay Williams, who’s art collaboration art was on display at YoPlace, said, “I’m really satisfied with it.

“A lot of people really liked it, kids came up and said ‘wow it’s so pretty’ all the workers at YoPlace really like it.”

The art at YoPlace displayed animals hanging out and eating yogurt. Since the YoPlace is a business that provides yogurt she and her collaboration partner thought the theme fit the small local business.

Painting major, Francisco Tapia’s mural was made for Allison Tutoring.

He said, “It was strictly for the business. I wanted to please them and they said they wanted something that related to the business. Pretty much their logo. That’s pretty much what I did. I did their logo.”

Tapia did each color of the Allison Tutoring logo on to separate canvases and was able to hang up each canvas separately on their wall giving the image of their logo.

The contest also had artist Mike Fountain paint the mural for Neptunes Raw Oysters & Seafood Bar.

He explains that the bar being black and white had a lot to due with the decision of the art, the general manger of Neptunes Raw Oysters & Seafood Bar Carter Lav suggested that it be in black and white.

Fountain had originally had color on the painted canvas.

“I took [Carter Lav] a series of drawings and painting to get and idea and his facility when you go in there is black and white. So I showed him a picture that was in the student painting [class] this spring […] I brought it to him in person and he said he wanted to see it in black and white.”

He went on to explain that Carter was taken back by the completion of the mural.

At La De Da Salon, a collaboration mural was done by Fine Arts major, Christina Covarrubia and Studio Art Drawing and Painting major, Jon Harguindeguy.

They had one drawing done on the employ door and the other on the wall.

Harguindeguy said, “It was done to match the salon. We came in and checked out the salon, we saw their style that they already had set. We saw that it was very nice, very clean and very modern. And making sure that it stayed within those tones […] we tried to match up everything until we hit that blue […] we went over everything with the owner as well to see that she got the best product as well.” Harguindeguy said.

Seeing these murals and acknowledging these small businesses, a total of four people posted selfies with these murals with the hashtag #LakeOverMuralProject.

The winner of the contest as yet to be posted and thus, has not been determined. The social media contest ended on Sunday. Out of the four who posted selfies on Instagram it can only be a wonder who will get the Apple iPad Air 2.