Lifestyle
These muralists capture L.A. in their art. Now wrap your holiday gifts in their designs
Muralists living and working in Los Angeles often bring color and culture to the city’s concrete façades. Their work is a tribute to the life and times of the city. For our annual holiday wrapping paper feature, Times art directors commissioned eight L.A.-based muralists to illustrate intriguing designs, from a Dodgers tribute to sweet treats perfect for the season. (You can find all the designs in Sunday’s Weekend print section.)
Here, you can read about the artists and download your favorite designs to use on your desktop and phone. Or you can print them out at home and use them to wrap to your heart’s content.
Daniel Antelo
Daniel “Downtown Daniel” Antelo is a muralist and oil painter from Los Angeles who’s celebrated for his dynamic style that fuses hyper-realism with abstract elements. His art, which has showcased the Dodgers, Nike and Kobe Bryant’s family, among other clients, reflects a deep connection to L.A.’s culture and community.
You can see more of his work on Instagram @downtowndaniel and on his website, downtowndaniel.net.
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Marisabel Bazan
Marisabel Bazan is a Panamanian artist based in Los Angeles who’s known for her vibrant, multidisciplinary works spanning painting, sculpture and public art. Her art explores themes of metamorphosis, mental health and the human spirit, with notable commissions such as “Dance of the Butterflies” (West Hollywood) and “Il Cammino Della Farfalla” (Panama City, Panama). Exhibited internationally, including at the United Nations in Geneva, Bazan’s work is part of prominent collections worldwide. A vocal mental health advocate, she merges creativity and humanitarian efforts through powerful projects and collaborations with global brands.
You can see more of her work on Instagram @marisabelbazan and on her website, marisabelbazan.com.
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Parisa Parnian
Parisa Parnian is an Iranian American artist and cultural storyteller based in Los Angeles whose work bridges the worlds of food, design and art.
With a creative practice focused on celebrating immigrant and diasporic communities, Parnian uses her illustrations to reflect her passion for connecting cultures by using bold patterns, vibrant colors and meaningful narratives. Her work, deeply inspired by her experiences as a culinary creative and visual artist, aims to honor heritage while also reimagining it for a modern, multicultural audience.
You can see more of her work on Instagram @savage_taste and on her website, savagemuse.com.
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Cleon Peterson
Cleon Peterson’s is an L.A.-based artist whose chaotic and violent paintings depict the struggle between power and submission in the fluctuating architecture of contemporary society. His category-defying work has illustrated features in the New York Times, fiction by George Saunders in the New Yorker and Penguin Classics’ edition of Philip K. Dick’s “The Man in the High Castle.” In 2020, he released a series of instrumental political posters disseminated through his website.
You can see more of his work on Instagram @cleonpeterson and on his website, cleonpeterson.com.
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Brenda Cibrian
Brenda Cibrian is an artist and muralist based in Los Angeles whose work centers on nostalgic, dreamy and introspective themes. When collaborating with communities and clients, she uses her murals to show cultural elements, nature and diversity with the intention of beautifying spaces with uplifting art. As a multidisciplinary visual artist, Cibrian says her mediums include large-scale murals, original paintings, illustrations and graphic design.
You can see more of her work on Instagram @brendacibrian_art and on her website, brendacibrian.com.
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Mikolaj Wyszynski
Mikolaj Wyszynski is a painter and illustrator from downtown Los Angeles. He works mainly in acrylics mixed with spray paint and enamels for his paintings and murals. His new work is focused on portraits with technology and fictional landscapes that are riddled with cybertrash.
You can see more of his work on Instagram @mikolajone and his website, mikolajw.com.
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Nuria Ortiz
Ms. Yellow, a.k.a. Nuria Ortiz, is a self-taught Mexican American muralist and teaching artist from Carson. She has dedicated her time to the creative development and empowerment of communities, working closely with schools, galleries, organizations, museums and others to develop art workshops, murals and mentorships for youth. The focal themes of her artwork are culture, folklore, mental health, education, unity, love and social justice.
You can see more of her work on Instagram @MsYellowArt.
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Kim Gaeta
Kim Gaeta is a Mexican American artist and muralist who was born in Los Angeles. Her focus is on what unites the human condition with nature and the cycles of life and death. Working within a range of media including assemblage, drawing, printing and painting, she has explored floral, fauna, folklore and symbols. Her images are often surreal and focused on symbolism within nature.
The illustration below unites hope, prosperity and good luck in the new year. Kim uses lady bugs as berries to symbolize good fortune, the wreaths to symbolize eternal unity and the candles to symbolize light in darkness.
You can see more of her work on Instagram @tarantula_garden and on her website kimgaeta.com.
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Students walk on the Stanford University campus on March 14, 2019, in Stanford, Calif.
Ben Margot/AP
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Ben Margot/AP
When Theo Baker arrived at Stanford University a few years ago, he joined the student newspaper, following the path of his journalist parents, Peter Baker, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, and Susan Glasser, a writer for The New Yorker.
Through his reporting as a student journalist, he eventually broke a story about manipulated data in Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne’s neuroscience research that helped lead to the university president’s resignation.
Theo Baker’s book, How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University was released May 19. In it, Baker describes Stanford as a place where proximity to Silicon Valley gives rise to a parallel system of influence, recruitment and money, with investors looking to identify promising students almost as soon as they arrive on campus.
He told Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep there was “a sort of Stanford inside Stanford,” where elite students are drawn into an “alternate reality” of excess and access to cut corners.
In the interview, he discusses how Stanford is not just a university but also a pipeline where status and power can matter as much as ideas.
We reached out to Stanford University for comment and have not heard back.
Listen to the interview by clicking play on the blue box above.
The scoreboard shows the results of the women’s singles final match between Iga Swiatek of Poland and Amanda Anisimova of the U.S. at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, Saturday, July 12, 2025.
Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
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Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
Fifteen points in tennis? Nice. Thirty, 40 — even better. Advantage — that sounds good. “Love” — that also must be great, right? Well, not quite.
As the French Open rolls on and Serena Williams has announced her return to the sport, maybe you’ve been paying a little more attention to tennis. The sport’s scoring system is notably distinct, and can sometimes be hard to grasp for newcomers. But even tennis aficionados might not know why, or how, “love” became the unmistakable callout for zero points. For this installment of NPR’s Word of the Week, we’re exploring how a word that signifies trailing behind got such a sweet name.
“Love” comes from the heart — or an egg?
It’s hard to pinpoint when the first tennis ball went over the net. Tennis is a derivative of lots of other sports, such as “jeu de paume,” a handball game played in France, said JT Buzanga, the collections manager at the International Tennis Hall of Fame museum.
But tennis became a patented, official sport in 1874, said Steve Flink, a journalist whose tennis coverage got him inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. It has retained its unique, mysterious scoring system ever since.
“By and large, the original system has held up almost entirely,” Flink said.
The use of “love” goes back to the late 18th century, said Jesse Sheidlower, a lexicographer. But it was used earlier than that in card games such as whist and bridge. Before the term made its way to tennis, the sport favored plain old “nothing,” or “nil,” he said.
Why love in the first place, though? Historians don’t really know for sure, but there are a few theories.
The French could have something to do with it. Some historians believe “love” derives from “l’oeuf,” which means “the egg” in French. Because eggs are shaped like zeros, terms such as “goose egg” and “duck’s egg” have been used in other contexts to mean zero, Sheidlower said.
It’s also possible English speakers mispronounced l’oeuf as “love.” But Sheidlower isn’t convinced that’s the answer.
“It’s the French equivalent of an English expression. But since that expression doesn’t appear in French, the French word wouldn’t have been used,” he said.
To be sure, France has had a lot of influence on tennis culture, Buzanga said. For example, “deuce” or a game tied at 40 points, comes from the French word for “two”: “deux.” But he prefers another prominent theory: that “love” comes from the idiom “for the love of the game.” Even if a player hasn’t scored, it doesn’t matter, because their heart is in it. It’s the theory Sheidlower said is the most plausible, because the idiom was used by the English before tennis was popularized.
Another variation of the “love of the game” theory is that the word could have come from the Dutch “lof,” or “honor” — or the Latin “amare,” meaning “to love,” Flink said.
But if tennis’ “love” doesn’t come from a French word, the theory at least has a French sensibility.
“I think the ‘for the love of the game’ is kind of romantic,” Buzanga said.
“Love” probably isn’t going anywhere
Tennis used to be a sport of leisure. The style of play has changed a lot over the years; players are more athletic and competitive, for instance, Flink said. But the rules of the sport are more steadfast, he said.
“There’s this incredible, enduring respect for tradition in tennis,” he said. “Changes are not made easily.”
There has been one major change in modern history: the tie-break. Matches can go on and on because players have to score two consecutive points to break a deuce, or by two games to break a tied set. But the onset of television meant matches would have to get shorter if the sport wanted to capture a larger audience, Flink said.
Change even came for “love.” An alternative sprouted up in the 1970s, and is still used today: “bagel,” named for its zero shape, Sheidlower said. Novices may say “zero,” and insiders will understand what they mean, but they “will needle them about it,” Flink said.
But “love” still prevails.
“People kind of like it,” Flink said. “It’s different. Why say zero when you can say love?”
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