Feed SoCal food drive: Cloe Hakakian hopes to 'INSPIRE' you with her T-shirt design

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- SoCal artist Cloe Hakakian states that she started painting murals by accident.

"Somebody had a mural opportunity, and I said, 'Oh, yeah, I do that all the time!' I had never painted a mural," she said. "And once I did it, I was like, 'Oh, wow, I really just want to do this all the time.' It just kind of snowballed."

"I posted a couple of pictures on Instagram. Other people said, 'Hey, can you do this? Can you do that?' And before I knew it, I was busier doing murals than I was doing other things. So I just went for it," she said.

"But it's awesome! All my projects are different. I've worked for small companies, big companies, corporate companies, family owned companies."

ABC7 partnered with Smile South Central to identify muralists willing to donate their time to create T-shirt designs to support our 11th annual Feed SoCal food drive.

Cloe mentioned that she is excited to be participating in our Feed SoCal campaign.

"Fortunately, I never had to deal with food insecurity growing up or at any point in my life. And I'm really privileged for that. And this was a great way for me to give back because I know so many people do suffer from that," she said.

She talked about her vision for her T-shirt design. "I really like typography. I like playing with different colors, different concepts. And this gave me the opportunity to play with a few different concepts jumbled into one."

"I think the word 'INSPIRE' is just so in your face. I want to inspire you. So I'm going to say 'Inspire,'" she said. "The great thing about art is that it can start a conversation and if the person wearing it feels inspired by it, and maybe they walk down the street, somebody sees it and feels inspired by it."

"Maybe it makes somebody smile. That's my main goal. To make somebody feel a little bit better than they did before they saw it," she added.

ABC7 will donate 100% of its proceeds from the sale of the exclusive T-shirt designed by Cloe Hakakian to support our 11th annual Feed SoCal campaign.

To purchase a T-shirt, visit ABC7's apparel shop.

You can find all our ABC7 merchandise at abc7.com/shop.