Walk through Pico Union near Washington Boulevard and Hoover Street, and a larger-than-life portrait of former and current Dodger players Julio Urías, Dustin May, Freddie Freeman, Chris Taylor, Mookie Betts, and Clayton Kershaw takes center stage.
The piece above the former Advance Auto Parts and tire shop bursts with color and energy, depicting the 2022 Dodgers’ lineup. While some might not wear the uniform, they still remain part of the Dodgers’ legacy.
The portrait depicts the players in various jerseys, each painted to closely resemble their real-life likenesses. One wears the colors of the Mexican flag, and they are framed by cheering fans against the Los Angeles skyline. The mural incorporates details of the space itself — a motor and a mechanic’s hand — blending naturally into the working-class neighborhood.
“People like that the players look realistic and the crowd and the city are a part of it,” Koreatown-based artist Mike “Tewsr” Duncan said. “Everyone understands why it works — it’s all LA based. There’s pieces of the city and the stadium. It encompasses all these things that people know and appreciate.”
Making art under the name TEWSR ONE, he painted the mural for two weeks in August 2022 and took on the project because of the aspirational message it carries, especially for young people growing up nearby.
“The Dodgers have been a big thing for people in L.A. for a long time,” he said. “The people in Pico Union, they appreciate it because they love the Dodgers and they know the players too, especially the Latino ones. To them it’s like, cool — they feel represented. It’s the heart of the city. Areas that see more gang graffiti in general, see us doing public art for the community, they take a lot of pride seeing something like that in their area.”
Tewsr is definitely not alone in creating Dodgers murals across Los Angeles. Boyle Heights artist Robert Vargas painted a mural of Fernando Valenzuela in Boyle Heights and Shohei Ohtani in Little Tokyo.
Vargas said it was important for him to paint these murals back-to-back in 2024 to show the unity that exists between the multiple communities that make up the city.
“These two communities have a long standing history with each other because Boyle Heights used to also be Japanese and has a very intertwined relationship in history with the Mexican American community,” he said. “And I thought, you know, it would be a source of great pride if that mural existed right there in the heart of Little Tokyo on First Street, underscoring the importance of that corridor.”
Vargas explained that Japanese families once lived and owned property in Boyle Heights, and he has heard stories of the connections between the Japanese American and Mexican American communities, especially during World War II and the internment era.
In both Tewsr’s and Vargas’s cases, though their murals feature Dodger players, the messages behind them aren’t about the team’s front office and lack of messaging to its immigrant fans over the last year. They say their art was created before the recent debates took shape.
“As an artist, you get commissions, you do the work, and then something bad happens around it and people try to attach it to us,” Tewsr said. “But the whole thing with the Dodgers wasn’t a thing until after we did (the mural), which was funny, because it was meant to be a Latino Heritage Month project.”
Still, Tewsr acknowledges that the mural’s meaning has shifted for some viewers in the wake of a year marked by heightened ICE raids and criticism of the Dodgers’ ownership over their response to support for former President Donald Trump. The complicated feelings among the fans persist: after back‑to‑back World Series victories, the Dodgers have accepted a traditional invitation to visit the White House to celebrate their title, with Trump set to host the ceremony.
While Tewsr’s mural centers on baseball, his artistic roots stretch far beyond sports.
Raised in Costa Mesa, he began painting graffiti in the early ’90s after getting into skateboarding, drawn to what he described as its rebellious energy. He said he had always been drawing, even as a kid — selling small sketches to classmates for “candy money.”
“It was kind of a gradual harmony that worked out nicely,” he said. “It was a street thing, and it just made sense to me.”
Tewsr said his background has also shaped his work. His mother is Mexican and his father is of Scottish, Hawaiian, Cherokee, and Japanese descent. Growing up with his grandparents, he added that he did not grow up speaking Spanish and described his childhood in Costa Mesa as a time when being Hispanic was often stigmatized.
Before graffiti, his influences came from comic books, cartoon characters, Mad Magazine, hip-hop, and pop culture — imagery that was instantly recognizable.
As his style evolved, he gravitated toward more detailed, graffiti-influenced lettering, often three-dimensional and European in style, shaped by the L.A. graffiti scene and artists like Ditch, Decipher, Anger, and Nik Nak. He became especially known for character-based work that avoided heavy outlines, making figures feel more realistic than cartoonish.
“I wanted to push what I was doing with graffiti — have it be more dialed in, more detailed,” he said. “A lot of it was comic-book-based. I did a lot of Spider-Man.”
Cats have also become a recurring subject in his work. “I do a lot of cats, actually. I’ve always been a cat dude. I’ve had them all my life — they just chill, and people like cats,” he said alongside his fat cat named Baxter, who his young daughter calls big Billy.
Before becoming a full-time artist, Tewsr spent more than a decade working for his family’s drugstore chain. In 2009, he made the decision to leave that job and commit fully to his art.
“At the time, I thought, ‘either I get stuck here because I need this job, or I can do art full time,’” he said.
Today, Tewsr’s work often centers on narrative-driven imagery, using objects and animals to represent broader themes, including the power of women and nature, as well as the challenges faced by young people.
Now based in Los Angeles, Tewsr said the city continues to shape his artistic approach.
“The neighborhood inspires me,” he said about Koreatown. “Being where you are has an impact visually — just seeing the cityscape and the area. All of it is culturally influential. Costa Mesa wasn’t like that. Here, there’s food, people, culture — you interact with so many different communities.”
Tewsr said he never imagined art could be a viable career when he was growing up, which is part of why public murals remain especially meaningful to him.
“When I was a kid, I had no idea that was something you could do for work,” he said. “Seeing someone paint publicly — a kid could pass by and think, ‘That guy did that with paint.’ Doing a large-scale mural like that, you feel more encompassed by it.”
