The Willey Bee Mural

In September 2022 the Laguna Beach Garden Club welcomed Matt Willey, world-renown artist and founder of The Good of the Hive initiative, to kick off our annual speaker series. Willey seeks to ignite radical curiosity and active engagement around planetary health issues through art, bees and storytelling. Through art and imagination, the mission of this global art project and organization is to raise awareness about the current struggle and population decline of honeybees while celebrating their incredible behaviors. He is committed to personally paint 50,000 honeybees – the number necessary for a healthy, thriving hive – in murals around the world! Matt states that healing the planet is a marathon, not a sprint. Eight years into an estimated 21-year project, Matt has created 48 murals and installations around the world with over 10,000 hand painted bees. When our paths crossed with Matt Willey, we knew that we wanted to be a part of his mission.

The diminishing population of pollinators has become a dire problem and is radically decreasing the world’s food supply. According to a 2017 report, more than 700 different North American species of bees are headed toward extinction. This creates a huge concern for US food security. A key link in the natural food chain, without bees, many herbivores would simply starve. And without those plant eaters, the meat eaters would also falter. Honeybees contribute an estimated $15 billion to crop production; they are like dollar bills flying over US crops. Furthermore, our bee friends, particularly wild bees, are also responsible for climate change mitigation. They are credited with fostering rich natural vegetation, which is known to offset carbon emissions. Everyone’s future flies on the wings of pollinators!

The Laguna Beach Garden Club has been working to educate our members and the general public about the plight of pollinators and our need to turn the tide on this serious problem. We have been planting pollinator gardens throughout the city, assisting local schools to integrate education about the importance of pollinators through our support of school gardens, and recently took part in the Laguna Art Museum Saturday Storytime reading “Give Bees a Chance” by Bethany Barton to local children.

We are thrilled to bring Matt Willey to Laguna Beach to create one of his world-renown murals. Public murals have long served as powerful platforms for social activism. Public art is uniquely accessible and enables people to experience art during daily life, outside of museums. By presenting these messages in public spaces, artists spark conversation, challenge perceptions, and inspire collective action for positive change. The engagement builds a sense of ownership and pride within a community, fostering a shared commitment to the message. A lecture or email does not have nearly the same impact! We hope to spread the message in a hope driven, positive way to change the behaviors in all who engage with this beautiful work of art.

Funds for this mural were raised through the Laguna Beach Garden Club annual fundraiser, The Gate & Garden Tour which showcases a masterfully curated set of gardens in Laguna Beach neighborhoods. We are extremely grateful to our partner, the Laguna Beach County Water District, who serves as the host for our Gate & Garden Tour and who has graciously offered up a beautiful “Blank Canvas” for this one-of-a-kind creation. This work not only embodies the beauty of pollinators but also their need for water to maintain their existence.

Honey bees within the hive ‘think’ collectively. They are hard wired to understand that their immune system is collective. Their health is based on the health of the hive, not the individual bee. Matt’s work seeks to communicate that human and planetary health are collective, we are all truly connected more deeply than we realize. This mural is our club’s Love Letter to Laguna Beach. Our sincere hope is that we can collectively solve this crisis of pollinator endangerment with education, optimism and cooperation while keeping the needs of one another always at the forefront of all we do, for the good of our hive.