Art That Lives Here
Our walls are a canvas—celebrating community, creativity, and the artists who make Treehouse more than a dispensary.
Grateful
By BB Bastidas & In Collaboration with CLSICS
Treehouse’s newest mural, created by legendary artist BB Bastidas, bursts with life and color—a vibrant tribute to Santa Cruz’s Grateful Dead roots. Dancing bears take flight, skeleton riders cruise across psychedelic skies, and every brushstroke channels the spirit of freedom, creativity, and connection. Though the Dead only played one official concert in Santa Cruz County—a legendary 1983 show at the Watsonville Fairgrounds that drew over 11,000 fans—their presence here has always loomed large. From that historic night to the world’s largest archive of Dead history at UC Santa Cruz, the band’s legacy continues to ripple through the coast. This mural carries that energy forward: a celebration of art, cannabis, and the community that makes Treehouse thrive.
Photo by Karli Adams
Meet the Artist: BB Bastidas
The mural was created by BB Bastidas, an Oceanside native and co-founder of the cannabis brand CLSICS. Internationally recognized as a fine artist, muralist, and art director, Bastidas first honed his bold, kinetic style designing skateboard graphics—an influence that continues to shape his work today. His art has appeared in galleries, brand collaborations, and large-scale public walls around the world. For Treehouse, Bastidas blended his skate culture roots with Santa Cruz’s deep musical legacy, resulting in a piece that feels both timeless and freshly alive.
About CLSICS: The Brand Behind the Art
The mural comes through a partnership with CLSICS, the California cannabis brand known for its vapes, rosin, infused prerolls, and gummies. Just as the Grateful Dead brought people together around music, CLSICS celebrates community and creativity through cannabis, declaring themselves “the art company that sells weed.” Their support of this project reflects a shared vision with Treehouse: honoring history while creating spaces where art, cannabis, and community collide in colorful new ways. To mark the collaboration, Treehouse and CLSICS also launched a special release — the Dead Strawberry Rosin Tincture — a playful nod to the Dead’s legacy and a testament to the craft cannabis artistry both brands champion.
Photos by Karli Adams
Ghosts in the Forest
By GATS
“Ghosts in the Forest” is in reference to the massive amount of Ghost Gear abandoned in the ocean and kelp deforestation by commercial fishing. Fishing nets make up about 10% of the overall plastic pollution in the ocean and about 46% of the floating plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Bottom Trawling devastates ecosystems by scraping the ocean floor with giant nets. Not only do these kill dolphins, sea turtles, protected fish, and many other species but it also has a similar effect on the environment as clear-cutting a forest on land. Estimates suggest that seaweed takes nearly 200 million tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere every year.
In this painting, there are shreds of kelp floating away while loose fishing nets dance and tangle around like ghosts haunting what was once a place full of life. I chose to use the word “forest” instead of “kelp forest” because they are both equally important to sustaining life on earth and the two characters are a nod to Neptune (the Roman god of freshwater) and Poseidon (the Greek god of the Ocean). They intertwine and merge, expressing our interconnectedness and dependence upon water both land and sea. The two also represent our ability to personify the ocean and adapt our narrative over time to create compassion for the part of our world that often feels alien to us. The two gods struggle as they fight with the nets. Who will win? The expression of life or the web of plastic death? It’s up to you.”
-Gats
More About Sea Walls
September 2021, PangeaSeed Foundation’s global Sea Walls: Artists for Oceans program created 19 ocean conservation-themed murals in Santa Cruz. Completed in a week with over 25 artists from a mix of Santa Cruz, California, and across the country. The large-scale artworks speak to locally relevant, pressing marine environmental issues such as plastic pollution, ocean acidification, warming seas, local biodiversity loss, environmental justice, and more. The mission is to empower individuals and communities to create meaningful environmental change for the oceans by raising public awareness of critical environmental issues through SCIENCE, EDUCATION, and ARTIVISM (S.E.A.) The project was produced by the Made Fresh Crew and is supported by the City of Santa Cruz Department of Economic Development, Lost Coast Plant Therapy, and the Save Our Seas Foundation, amongst others. PangeaSeed’s local partner, Made Fresh Crew, is a collective of Santa Cruz artists who collaborate on art projects locally & internationally. From their 500ft long ocean sustainability Mission Street mural to numerous large-scale community projects, Made Fresh Crew draws inspiration from street art, education, and activism.
In Bloom
By The Jams
In Bloom is a mural by The Jams—a Central Coast-born duo, Augie WK and Jessica Carmen, whose bold, culturally rooted public art has become a vibrant signature across California. This piece radiates with flowing stripes, delicate florals, and a silhouette that seems to speak through color itself. Both grounding and uplifting, In Bloom honors movement, identity, and the ever-evolving beauty of California’s layered stories—where culture, nature, and community bloom together in harmony.