For three years in county jail, Kai Bannon was accustomed to the same sterile, plain walls. There were no cell windows and very rarely was he allowed to go outside. Then one day in the chow hall he saw a cardboard box with an emblem of red cherries. It was the first time he’d seen bright red since his incarceration.
Even though incarcerated people typically aren’t allowed to take items back to their cell, he took it with him so he could look at the cherries every morning. He said it reminded him there’s still color in the world.
Bannon, who is now serving a 70 years to life sentence at San Quentin State Rehabilitation Center, looks back on that moment as a source of inspiration for SkunkWorks, a group he formed to encourage incarcerated people to take leadership and transform San Quentin from the inside out.
SkunkWorks has organized events like a chess match with correctional officers and a community game day but their signature initiative is bringing bright, colorful murals to the prison walls.
”We really wanted to do something that benefited everyone in our community in here,” Bannon said. “The introduction of color and other things can improve the sensory environment.”
SkunkWorks latest mural was done in collaboration with the French-Tunisian artist eL Seed, whose energetic calligraphy has been collected by leading arts institutions, and has also been shown in public spaces such as the pyramids of Giza and in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro.
The project was supported by Gov. Gavin Newsom, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation and the mayor’s office in San Francisco. It was also an official part of San Francisco Art Week 2026.
eL Seed spent just over a week painting Arabic calligraphy on the east wall of the new learning center on prison grounds. The mural was inspired by a quote from Armistead Maupin’s novel, “Tales of the City”: “The world changes in direct proportion to the number of people willing to be honest about their lives.”
“The purpose of the project is not to judge people from what they’ve done, but more to accept the fact that somebody made a mistake and say, ‘Okay, I want to change, and I want to take a different path,’” eL Seed said. “This quote from Maupin was perfectly reflecting the spirit of the project.”
eL Seed didn’t stop there — he also painted that same mural on the wall of the Orpheum Theater near the Civic Center to create, in his words, “a symbolic conversation between two worlds” about transformation and redemption between the inside and the outside.
For both the inside and outside murals, eL Seed painted the outline and invited community members to fill in the space. Inside San Quentin, some residents participated — then victims of violence and family members of people inside painted the Orpheum mural.
One man painted the mural in San Quentin while his wife painted the one at the Orpheum. They worked on the same project miles apart.
George Coles, who participated in the project and is serving 35 years to life in San Quentin under the three strikes law, noted that in prison, bright colors usually signify something negative, such as a warning that something is out of bounds. He hopes the new mural in San Quentin bolsters community, and encourages conversations about redemption and incarceration with the outside world.
“Just because we’re wearing blue and you aren’t, it doesn’t mean that we don’t need the same kind of help and camaraderie as everyone else does,” Coles said. The mural, he said, shines “light on a place that doesn’t really get a lot of light, physically and metaphorically.”