Meet the ‘Happy Artist’ behind the Long Beach Airport’s new mural

The new, vibrant and colorful 60-foot-by-30-foot mural that’s displayed in a prominent part of the Long Beach Airport is by far the largest piece of art that award-winning artist Marconi Calindas-Cafege has ever created.

Adorning the west side of Parking Structure A near the airport’s Historic Terminal, the massive vinyl mural dubbed “A Flight to History,” was unveiled on Nov. 29 to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of the airport.

The mural is painted in blue, red, yellow and purple hues and features the iconic Historic Terminal at its center. The terminal is surrounded by a tapestry of airplanes and local landmarks that define Long Beach and the long history of the airport, which is California’s oldest municipal airport.

“As an artist I’ve just always been inspired by color,” said Calindas-Cafege, whose colorful artwork has earned him the nickname “The Happy Artist.”

“And whenever I would see murals, I would always tell myself someday I will have a mural somewhere in the world and now it’s happened and it was all inspired by the history of the Long Beach Airport,” the 48-year-old continued.

He started the mural not by stepping on a ladder or lift to paint the walls, but by using a digital pen and his iPad to create a digital painting that was then blown up onto a vinyl canvas.

“It still feels pretty traditional, like you’re painting and I still devoted and put in the same length of time doing it on an iPad as if I was doing it directly on a canvas,” he said.

“People thought I was going to be painting on the wall, but no, I’m no Michelangelo,” he joked.

The mural is the latest piece in a rising art career that Calindas-Cafege sort of fell into.

Born in the Philippines, Calindas-Cafege was working as a reporter and photojournalist in the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth in the Pacific Ocean.

He always dabbled in art on the side while working his day job, but encouraged by his now husband, he started focusing more on art and displaying his work in art fairs and other events. Officials at a local mall noticed him and he was commissioned to create art for their marketing campaign.

“It got bigger and bigger and so I couldn’t focus anymore with my writing job, so I quit journalism and focused on the arts,” he said.

It was the right decision because he quickly began to get a lot more attention for his artwork, which he describes as a hodgepodge of abstract, realism and cubism all flooded in a rainbow of colors.

In 2013, he was a featured artist for Absolut Vodka when he painted two five-foot-tall Absolut vodka bottles for company pop art shows in San Francisco and New York. Then in 2016, he won the Emirates Airlines Art of Travel Art Competition and his winning design was featured in the Emirates Skywards Platinum membership card for the next few years.

He’s also displayed public art in San Francisco and in Palm Springs, where he owns a gallery and is responsible for three public benches and two utility boxes there that he painted in vibrant red, greens and blues depicting portraits and flowers.

And music fans may recognize his work from the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Indio, where in 2019 and 2022 he was chosen as one of the trash can artists who added color and design to several trash cans displayed on the Empire Polo Field.

For the Long Beach mural, Calindas-Cafege, who was selected from a pool of nearly 100 applicants, he spent weeks researching Long Beach history to create a piece that includes landmarks like the Queen Mary, the Aquarium of the Pacific, the Lions Lighthouse and others, all surrounded by airplanes.

“It captures a lot of icons of the airport and the city. It makes me feel happy when I look at it. It’s bright, it’s got this element of being both forward and historic looking,” said Dale Worsham, the commercial development officer for the Long Beach Airport.

The vinyl mural was printed out in sections based on Calindas-Cafege’s digital painting before being assembled in an aluminum frame and placed in its new home, where it will be on display for at least a year.

“That spot is so central to the airport and to the view of passengers,” Worsham noted.

Since he was on vacation while the mural was unveiled, Calindas-Cafege has yet to see his work on the wall. But he’s planning a trip to Long Beach soon to take it all in and see his first large-scale mural in person.

“I hope commuters and people driving around enjoy the colors. I hope the colors represent the vibrancy of the city and its people and it makes them smile and happy,” he said.