The Brief

About a month after I earned my parole and was released from High Desert State Prison in 2024, my buddy Kai Bannon called me from San Quentin through the institutional phone portal. My eyes welled with emotion at being on the other side of these monitored calls for the first time as a free person.

Kai co-founded San Quentin SkunkWorks — a nonprofit social innovation lab focused on introducing and testing moonshot reform ideas, and he and his inside team embarked on a series of community-oriented projects within the prison.

Now Kai wanted my help to realize a bold new vision — to rehabilitate the 19th century architectural landscape of San Quentin by infusing it with light, color, beauty and art.

Gov. Gavin Newsom committed $240 million toward renovating the state’s oldest prison and rebranding it as San Quentin Rehabilitation Center. His plan includes a new multi-building educational complex, as well as repurposing the former Death Row condemned housing unit into living quarters for the general population.

But it doesn’t include changing the drab beige and brown exteriors that surround residents whenever they leave their tiny dark cells, which were built in the late 1800s. The physical environment still signifies oppression, confinement, punishment.

With so much attention focused on the new buildings set to open in early 2026, Kai began to envision SkunkWorks as a platform that might aesthetically elevate the older, less glamorous parts of the facility.

He christened the project Chiaroscuro: Light Within the Shadows. An Italian term of art, chiaroscuro describes the graphic interplay between light and dark highlights. Metaphorically, it underscores the bright juxtapositions of humanity that live deep within our prisons.

We needed to meet two objectives simultaneously: 1) reach out to global artists to see who’d be interested in working inside an incarcerated community; and 2) figure out how to convince prison administrators that our project had merit.

From Dubai to the U.K. to California, world renowned muralists responded. The concept intrigued them, and they wanted to find out more about San Quentin. They wanted to understand the community they might soon visit and hope to inspire through art. The Skunks collected stories of the individuals living inside San Quentin — including officers and staff who spend large chunks of their days working alongside residents.

Much to our amazement, prison officials agreed we were on the right path. With their support, we gained approval for photos and design layouts of the facility to be shared with prospective artists.

“The murals aren’t just about making the place look better. They change the mood out here,” said San Quentin Correctional Sgt. Freddy Brenes. “A calmer yard means a safer yard — for staff and for the people living here.”

We soon felt an immediate connection with Faith XLVII, a South African artist known for creating community-inspired street murals on public wall spaces and buildings.

“My personal view is just that art has been and is, in all traditional societies, very much a part of the cultural fabric of life and the processes of life,” Faith said. “It's cathartic; it's therapeutic; it's psychological. It speaks in a visual language that negates words and can speak directly to the heart through metaphors and symbols.”

Faith XLVII, a South African artist, outside of San Quentin Rehabilitation Center on July 11, 2025.

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Jungho Kim

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CalMatters

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Faith already had a planned trip to San Francisco in June for a gallery exhibit, so talks quickly evolved. Would it be possible to create a mural on a San Quentin wall in July? We’d need clearcut approval by the administration. We’d also need to raise funds to cover materials and costs.

Kai and his team launched a grassroots social media campaign asking for donations. Because it was the debut installment of Chiaroscuro, we felt an added pressure to pull it off without much hitch.

SkunkWorks raised thousands of dollars by June. A percentage of that came from dozens of residents who filled out donation slips inside the facility for money to be deducted from their institutional trust accounts.

“It's actually kind of cool,” Kai told me. “A number of people came by and said they gave five bucks or 10 bucks. Those are small amounts for people on the outside. But you and I both know how much five or 10 bucks means in here.”

In addition to Faith, we partnered with Shannon Riley, one of the co-founders of Building 180 — an art production and consulting agency responsible for coordinating public art installations all around the world.

With Riley’s outreach, Dunn-Edwards Paints sponsored most of the paint for the mural. Their local distributors mixed and prepared custom colors along with a UV protective finishing coat.

“I think placing art in public spaces can really help connect people in meaningful ways,” said Riley. “It sparks conversation and dialogue, curiosity and confidence — all really important for healing and rehabilitation.”

Faith’s son, Keya Tama, came from New York to help paint. One of the SkunkWorks outside volunteers who was traveling abroad donated her Sausalito residence for them to stay in comfortable accommodations close to San Quentin.

Barbed wire casts shadows on a mural painted by Keya Tama at the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center on July 11, 2025.

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Jungho Kim

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CalMatters

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An artist himself, Keya felt compelled to install his own mural after speaking about the project with residents and staff.

“As soon as I saw the wall, I kind of just had a feeling,” he said. “Much more like finding something that needed to be there — or had always needed to be there.”

'Like a piece of freedom'

The Faith XLVII mural stands on the outside of West Block, where more than half the population passes back and forth on any normal day.

George Mesro Coles-El has lived in San Quentin for 13 years, and in all that time, the large blank walls seemed to represent only institutionalization and despair.

“To be able to come out over these last few days and see a mural on the wall in front of me — like when I come and get that first fresh breath of air in the morning, it’s really impactful for me,” said Coles-El. “I never thought I would see a mural like that in a dismal place like prison.”

Coles-El, Tony Haro and Luis Maya all worked with Faith XLVII and Keya Tama. They helped organize and prepare the paint, maintained the brushes and rollers and got a chance to color different segments.

“You get to see something just so different, like a piece of freedom,” said Haro. “We’re going back and forth looking at this beautiful mural that has a quote that's saying ‘the heart of the world,’ you know? The other day, somebody asked me what does that mean?

“And I said listen to what they're saying, bro — wherever you're at, you're the heart of the world. We're the heart of the world. You carry that with you.”

More than simply transforming the physical surroundings, the mural also helped shift cultural perceptions.

“I honestly have a newfound respect for staff,” said Maya. “A lot of them took extra efforts to see the project through — just being able to be flexible, being receptive of communication. And then seeing how officers need a new change of scenery as much as us.”

A goodbye through a gate

On July 11, San Quentin Rehabilitation Center planned a media event to celebrate the murals. Faith and a news photographer waited outside but were told no guests would be allowed in that day because of an unexpected modified lockdown.

Assistant Warden Yaser Samara and Faith XLVII stand in front of the artist’s mural at the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center on July 11, 2025.

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Jungho Kim

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CalMatters

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But Associate Warden Yaser Samara called and asked them to come back. Despite the lockdown, he was ready to help Faith get photos and commemorate her art before she returned to South Africa.

“I'm sure there's many perspectives on this, but at least in my experience with the warden, assistant warden and guards — I met some pretty special people who seemed to want to also bring changes to the system,” said Faith. “And that was very inspiring to me to see that.”

But because of the modified lockdown, Kai was not allowed to be outside when photos were taken. He saw Faith through a locked gate, and she came over to say goodbye and shake his hand through the thick iron bars.

“It's not how I imagined this ending,” he told me. “But maybe it said everything — that like even in this place that's built to separate us, we've still found a way to connect.

“And I think that the handshake said more than words ever could. It's gratitude. It's grief. It's a whole project in a single gesture reaching across boundaries and trying to create something beautiful, even when the system tries to keep you apart.”

Joe Garcia is a California Local News fellow.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

It’s about the size of a park bench and made of steel and wood. The bench’s arm rests are formed by the letters “L” and “A” in a design that’s unmistakable to any sports fan. But the welder-artist who created it says it’s not a Dodgers bench.

“This is about civic pride, L.A. pride. I made a design statement saying that it has nothing affiliated with the Dodgers,” said Steve Campos.

Campos grew up near Dodger Stadium, raised by parents who were die-hard Dodgers fans. So much, that they named him after Steve Garvey but that legacy doesn’t keep him from confronting how the Dodgers benefitted from the mass displacement of working-class people from Chavez Ravine after World War Two. That’s why he calls it an L.A. Bench, and not a Dodgers Bench.

The logo may be synonymous with the city's beloved baseball team, but the design of the interlocking letters was used by the L.A. Angels minor league baseball team before the Dodgers moved to L.A. in 1958.

“The monogram was here before the Dodgers,” Campos said.

A second-generation welder

Welding is the Campos family business. His father created gates and security bars for windows and doors for L.A. clients. That was the foundation for the work Campos has done for two decades since graduating from Lincoln High School, L.A. Trade Tech College, and enrolling in a summer program at Art Center in Pasadena.

The inspiration for the L.A. Bench came last year while he was playing around in his shop creating versions of the L.A. logo. A friend he hangs with at Echo Park Lake asked Campos to make him a piece of furniture.

“I was trying to figure out what my friend Curly wanted. He liked Dodgers and drinking and getting into fights, so I was like, 'Let me make something with the LA monogram,'” he said.

Welder-artist Steve Campos created whimsical steel sculptures with the LA logo.

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Courtesy Steve Campos

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It didn’t design itself. He said he had to lengthen the legs on the “A” and lean the back of the “L” in order to make the bench functional. In the process, he’s made a piece of furniture with a ubiquitous logo that he’s embedded with his own L.A. pride, as well as city history past and present.

LA civic pride travels to Japan

Campos vacationed in Japan the last week of April and took advantage of the trip to reach out to people who may be interested in the L.A. Bench. He was caught off guard by people’s reaction when he showed them pictures of it.

“They look at it and they go, 'Oh, Ohtani bench,'” he said.

For them, it’s still a bench embedded with pride, he said, but centered around Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani, an icon in his native Japan.

Campos has made four L.A. benches and is selling them fully assembled, he said, for $2,500 each — taking into account his labor and how costly the raw materials have become. For now, he’s offering the metal parts as a package for $500, which requires the buyer to purchase the wood for the seat and the back — an easy process, he said.

While he has no plans to mass produce the L.A. Bench, he does have one goal in mind that shows how hard it is for him to separate L.A. civic pride and the Dodgers.

“I would love to get a couple of them installed at Dodger Stadium,” he said.

The Venice Boardwalk after sunset has generally been a no-go zone for tourists and locals alike, as the beachside bars and restaurants close on the early side and safety is often an issue. Now, a group of artists is out to bring some vibrancy to the creative neighborhood with a series of new installations that will include live evening performances – and even a “Venice Opera House.”

“Let's play with light and let's play with sound and give people a reason to come to the Boardwalk after sundown,” said artist and entrepreneur Stefan Ashkenazy, who is curating the project and owns the buildings housing them. “I mean, let's just be open 24 hours a day.”

The concept doesn’t have an official name yet, but he’s been calling it “See World.”

Artist James Ostrer's space looks out from a bed through the fence to the ocean at Venice Beach.

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Laura Hertzfeld

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LAist

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William Attaway, a longtime Venice artist, created a gallery space filled with various paintings and sculptures.

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Laura Hertzfeld

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LAist

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The pair of modern buildings on the Venice Boardwalk at Thornton Ave. – with their big balconies, floor-to-ceiling glass windows, and seven open garage-style retail spaces – have sat mostly empty since Snapchat vacated their beachside offices in 2019. Ashkenazy recently bought the building and recruited artists to fill those front-facing spaces with creative work until a full-time tenant comes in.

Over the past several weeks the installations have been created in real-time, in public.

All of the projects are loosely along the theme of “home,” with each artist claiming a “room” in the two buildings that stretch across a full block on the Boardwalk. Several local Venice artists are featured, including William Attaway, whose intricate mosaic work is recognizable on the Venice public restrooms along the beach. Attaway’s space features a floating larger-than-life-sized statue and various works in a mini-gallery. In the next room is Robin Murez’s pieces, featuring carved wooden seats from her beloved neighborhood Venice Flying Carousel.

Ashkenazy is no stranger to wild (and wildly successful) art ideas. He’s the owner of the Petit Ermitage hotel in West Hollywood, a longtime haven for visiting artists, and the founder of the decade-old Bombay Beach Biennale, where artists install all kinds of work in an annual event near the Salton Sea. Many of the artists from that community are featured at the Venice project.

A "Venice Opera House" will host pop-up music events throughout the summer.

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Laura Hertfeldz

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LAist

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New York-based artist Greg Haberny's paintings on the wall of his Venice space.

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Laura Hertzfeld

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LAist

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New York-based artist Greg Haberny and London-based artist James Ostrer have brought some of their work in the Bombay Beach Biennale to the Venice project. Their windows on the Boardwalk both speak to a child-like sense of wonder and creativity.

“I think it's just kind of exploring and playing a little bit, to have the freedom to be able to do that,” Haberny says of his imagined child’s bedroom space, which includes a fort made out of puffy cheese balls. “It's a big space, too.
It's beautiful.”

Ostrer is experimenting with a performance art idea where he sits in bed amongst a room full of his own artwork, which he describes as “happy art with an edge.” Looking out at the ocean from the bed, he’s invited passersby to sit and have chats with him about his work or anything else they want to talk about.

“It’s a very intimate space, so you have a different kind of conversation,” he said. “I use art to channel human creativity, and [talk about] dark things.”

While there are open fences that block off the spaces, they aren’t sealed up at night. Both Ashkenazy and the team of artists seemed open to the idea that anything could happen and that the installations are a conversation with the public – and with that comes some risk.

Greg Haberny (right) works with his assistants on an installation featuring kid-inspired graffiti art and a "cheesy puff" fort.

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Laura Hertzfeld

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LAist

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“I don't really know if I [would] say worried, but I guess it's just the cost of doing business,” Haberny said. “I don't really make things to get damaged or broken, sure. But I have done [things like] burned all my paintings and then made paint out of ash.”

While he’s felt safe – and even slept overnight in the installation – Ostrer has been collaborating with a local female artist who performs in a pig mask in front of his installation some nights. Watching her perform, he said, has taught him about the vulnerability of women in public spaces like the Boardwalk. “I've started to, on a very fractional level, have seen how scary that is. Because I've sat in the bed behind her performing at the front here… the way in which men are approaching her and shrieking at her … it's shocking.”

Ashkenazy says he will keep the artists in the space, potentially rotating new ones in, until a fulltime tenant takes over.

“This is an experiment … and after acquiring the building, the intention wasn't, ‘let's open a bunch of public art spaces,’ he said. “It is kind of …what the building wanted and listening to what the Boardwalk needed. Let's play, let's have the artists that we love and appreciate have a space to play and engage and give the locals and the visitors to the Boardwalk something to experience.”

A new trail across the beloved natural area of Elephant Hill in Northeast Los Angeles is officially opening this weekend.

The route is years in the making, and it's a big milestone in the decades-long conservation efforts to preserve this local jewel in the community of El Sereno.

The hiking trail connects one side of Elephant Hill to the other — from the corner of Pullman Street and Harriman Avenue all the way across to Lathrop Street.

It's 0.75 miles in total, but packs a punch.

"It's a pretty straight shot, but because of the terrain — the trail is kind of twisty and curvy. There's switchbacks — and great views," Elva Yañez, board president of the nonprofit Save Elephant Hill, said.

People have always been able to access the 110-acre green space, but Yañez said the new trail provides a safe and easy way to navigate the steep hillsides.

The El Sereno nonprofit has been working for two decades to preserve the land. Illegal dumping and off-roading have damaged the open space over the years. And the majority of the 110 acres are privately owned by an estimated 200 individual owners.

Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA) joined the efforts in 2018, spurred by a $700,000 grant from Los Angeles County Regional Park and Open Space District, in part, to build the trail. The local agency received some $2 million in grants from the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy to add to the 10 acres of Elephant Hill it manages and conserves. This year, MCRA acquired an additional 12 parcels — or about 2.4 acres.

And the spiffy new footpath — with trail signage, information kiosks and landscape boulders — is not just a long-sought-for victory but a beginning in a sense.

"We know that it means a lot to the community," Sarah Kevorkian, who oversees the trail project for MRCA, said. "We're wrapping up the trail, but it really feels like the beginning of all that is to come."

A hint of that vision already exists — for hikers traversing the new route, courtesy of Test Plot, the L.A.-based nonprofit that works to revitalize depleted lands.

"They're able to see at the end of the trail, at the 'test plot' — exactly what a restored Elephant Hill would look like," Yañez said.

Here's a preview:

A coalition of residents from across the San Gabriel Valley are mobilizing over a battery storage project and possibly more industrial development in the City of Industry they say could pollute communities next door.

A protest is scheduled today in neighboring Rowland Heights, targeting a 400-megawatt battery energy storage facility sited on about 9 acres that was approved by the City of Industry leaders in January.

Such Battery Energy Storage Systems, or BESS, are used to keep the power grid stable, especially as output from renewable energy sources like solar and wind fluctuate. But fires involving lithium batteries at some sites have heightened environmental and public health fears.

Because of the City of Industry’s unusual, sprawling shape stretching along the 60 Freeway, it borders on more than a dozen communities, meaning what happens there can have far-reaching impact.

“Pollution does not end right at the border,” said Andrew Yip, an organizer with No Data Centers SGV Coalition. “Pollution travels.”

Some local activists with the Puente Hills Community Preservation Association have challenged the approval of the battery facility under the California Environmental Quality Act.

Beyond environmental concerns, locals have also been frustrated with how decisions are made by officials in the City of Industry, a municipality that’s almost entirely zoned for industrial use and has less than 300 residents.

Organizers say they’ve struggled to get direct responses from city officials whom they say have replaced regular meetings with special meetings, which under state law require less advance notice.

A city spokesperson has not responded to requests for comment.

The so-called Marici Energy Storage System Facility would be run by Aypa Power. The fact that the battery storage developer is owned by the private equity giant Blackstone, a major investor in AI and data centers, has only fueled concerns that a battery storage facility would lay the groundwork for data center development.

A request for comment from Aypa was not returned.

Today’s protest is taking place at Peter F. Schabarum Regional Park in Rowland Heights across the street from the Puente Hills Mall, a largely vacant “dead” mall, which activists fear could be redeveloped into a data center and bring higher utility costs and greater air and noise pollution.

Yip pointed out that industrial developments make a lot of money for the City of Industry.

“But none of these surrounding communities receive any of those benefits,” Yip said. “Yet we have to put up with all the harmful effects and impacts from this city that does all this development without really reaching out.”