By Chelsea Sektnan
2026
Photos by Chelsea Sektnan
The new mural taking shape at El Segundo Middle School is muralist Kopyeson’s handiwork, but it carries the fingerprints of an entire eighth-grade class.
It is the first mural he has painted at a school, where students will pass his work each day and, he hopes, maybe see something that makes them want to keep drawing or creating themselves.
“Hopefully, I can inspire someone,” Kopyeson said. “That’s the whole thing with my art.”
Carlos Talavera, known as Kopyeson in the art world, paints with the Los Angeles graffiti crew K2S, short for Kill 2 Succeed. His work has traveled well beyond Los Angeles. In 2024, he was included in City of Dreams, an eight-artist exhibition at Galerie Chenus Longhi in Paris examining Los Angeles through art and culture during the Summer Olympics. The exhibition also featured two-time Academy Award-winning production designer Rick Carter, painter Jose “Prime” Reza and letterer David “Big Sleeps” Cavazos. Kopyeson also joined Olympic skateboarder Andy Anderson and other artists for a gallery discussion about graffiti and skate culture.
“Hopefully, I can inspire someone,” Kopyeson said. “That’s the whole thing with my art.”
His connection to El Segundo’s art scene goes back several years. In 2022, he was one of eight artists who worked with Carter on ESMoA’s TIME exhibition, contributing a portrait of Abraham Lincoln and detailed drawings inspired by Back to the Future.
Now, his latest canvas is a middle school wall.
Across it, Kopyeson is painting a stylized view of El Segundo, with the familiar water tower, rooftops, and palm trees below oversized gulls sweeping through the scene. However, the mural is not entirely his design.
During the school’s Design Week in early 2026, eighth-graders created their own mural concepts and talked about the words and imagery that mattered to them. Kopyeson later worked some of those ideas into a drawing he had originally made while participating in an artist residency in El Segundo.
“But it’s pretty exciting to have a piece of artwork like this displayed on our campus.”
“Kids had a lot of input,” said John McCullough, director of the El Segundo Art Walk Foundation.
That included three words that now appear in the mural: honesty, kindness and integrity.
“Three pillars of things that they wanted to strive to be,” McCullough said, adding that students also came up with the phrase, “Today’s a good day to make a difference.”
Principal Sarah Davlantis said the student involvement is part of what makes the mural stand out.
“Typically in schools, you see a lot of school art, and it’s all good and wonderful and remarkable,” Davlantis said. “But it’s pretty exciting to have a piece of artwork like this displayed on our campus.”
More important, she said, was “the way that this has come to be,” through the partnership with the El Segundo Art Walk Foundation and ideas generated by students themselves.
The project grew out of a partnership between El Segundo Middle School and the El Segundo Art Walk Foundation. McCullough said the foundation, a nonprofit, wanted to expand its work beyond producing one annual Art Walk. Its mission includes supporting artists, small businesses, and youth through community programs, and Design Week provided an opportunity to bring that work directly onto an El Segundo school campus.
Eighth-graders could choose among three art-related projects. One explored augmented reality, another focused on artwork around school doorways, and a third invited students to develop concepts for the mural wall.
Working artists came in to talk with students, give feedback, and demonstrate their work. Kopyeson gave students a live graffiti demonstration before developing his own concept alongside them.
He then looked at the students’ work and asked what was important to them and what they wanted represented. McCullough said students threw out ideas as Kopyeson created art on a makeshift wall.
“They wanted something a little bit different and a little bit inspirational,” McCullough said.
Kopyeson already had a starting point.
While participating in an artist residency in El Segundo, he climbed onto a rooftop and began sketching what he could see around him.
“I was on top of the roof, and then I was just sketching or drawing what I saw, my view,” he said. “Luckily they picked it, so I was really excited about that.”
He adapted that drawing for the school, incorporating the students’ ideas into the landscape.
Davlantis said the school also hopes to add a description beside the mural explaining how it came together. She said the piece can give students “a sense of community” and something on campus they can be proud of, learn about and discuss.
Kopyeson’s own path into art was not especially direct. Born and raised in the San Fernando Valley, he remembers drawing since first grade.
“I was always attracted to art,” he said.
His teachers noticed early. Kopyeson remembers being sent to the principal’s office several times in elementary school, not because he was in trouble, but because teachers wanted to talk with his parents about his ability.
“They were telling my parents that I was gifted,” he said.
He qualified for an opportunity to attend another school but ultimately decided against it, in part because of the commute. He figured he could keep pursuing art closer to home, only to find that the program he wanted was not available. Instead, he ended up taking classes such as woodworking and mechanics.
“I was kind of bummed out, so I never really pursued it,” he said.
That did not last forever.
“I was always an artist, and then graffiti just caught my eye,” Kopyeson said.
Graffiti eventually led him back to drawing and painting, and much of what followed was self-taught.
“I started going back to my roots again,” he said. “So I started just being self-taught. The school didn’t teach me that.”
Working on a school campus has Kopyeson thinking again about what art meant to him at that age.
“I was kind of bummed out, so I never really pursued it,” he said.
While developing the mural, he said he found himself thinking about paper airplanes, books, crayons, and the feeling of being young, when there can still seem to be endless possibilities ahead.
“I started thinking a little bit of my childhood memory stuff,” he said. “If I inspire someone and touch someone, then I did my job.”
Jose Sarabia knows firsthand what that influence can look like.
Sarabia, who came to El Segundo to help Kopyeson with the mural, has known him for about 20 years and considers him a mentor.
“He’s a man of a few words, but definitely I think his work always speaks volumes,” Sarabia said. “His work is very elegant, yet still raw.”
Over the years, Sarabia said, Kopyeson taught him far more than technique. He remembers artists in their circle helping one another improve and Kopyeson stressing the importance of staying humble and remembering where you came from.
“He definitely showed me so many things,” Sarabia said, adding that he can imagine what the mural might have meant to him as a student. “As an artist, I would have geeked out if I came to this school and saw this.”
For him, though, the finished wall is only part of the experience.
“I think the magic in Kopy is watching him paint,” Sarabia said. “Because the end result is amazing.”
Kopyeson’s advice to young artists is simple.
“Just never stop drawing,” he said. “I just kept practicing and kept practicing. Don’t stop believing what you can accomplish.”
“Just never stop drawing,” he said. “I just kept practicing and kept practicing. Don’t stop believing what you can accomplish.”
