People in La Jolla’s Village, Bird Rock and La Jolla Shores neighborhoods are greeted by large-scale public murals every day, and students at UC San Diego now can have the same experience.
With the installation this week of Jim Isermann’s “Never Turn Your Back on the Ocean,” the Murals of La Jolla public art program has expanded onto the UCSD campus. The main face of the colorful, pattern-based two-sided mural is oriented toward the 9900 block of International Lane while the other side overlooks a basketball court in the student corridor of Eleanor Roosevelt College.
Expanding Murals of La Jolla to other areas of town has long been envisioned for the program, a project of the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library that was originally established by the La Jolla Community Foundation. But the collaboration with UCSD is a more recent development, according to Murals of La Jolla Executive Director Taylor Chapin.
Jessica Berlanga-Taylor, chief campus curator and executive director of UCSD’s Stuart Collection and The Strauss Family Gallery, “approached us about the possibility of working together, and we were immediately excited by the idea,” Chapin said. “Together, we embraced a shared commitment to integrating art into everyday life and to supporting artists through ambitious, site-specific projects. The opportunity to realize a mural within the heart of campus, where thousands of students pass daily, offered a powerful way to extend the reach of the program while remaining true to its mission.”
UCSD said in a social media post that it is “excited” to unveil the mural, but did not have immediate further comment.
For the first installation at the university, Murals of La Jolla worked with Isermann, a Wisconsin native.
“Having Jim’s mural as the inaugural piece for our collaboration with UC San Diego feels especially meaningful,” Chapin said. “The work reflects curiosity, discovery and transformation, qualities that speak both to the university’s culture and to the spirit of Murals of La Jolla. The fact that the mural engages both sides of the building, facing the street on one side and a basketball court on the other, perfectly captures the project’s goal of bringing art into the flow of everyday experience. It’s a beautiful and fitting way to expand the reach of the program.”
Isermann, an artist for “my entire life,” said he grew up in a prairie-style house in Kenosha, Wis., with an early appreciation for patterns and the “thoughtful” use of spaces. When art became his profession, Isermann worked with “all kinds of media and materials,” often integrating repeating patterns into his works.
Artist Jim Isermann created Murals of La Jolla’s new work at UC San Diego. (Provided by Jim Isermann)
When he arrived in California in 1978, his work evolved to also include references to pop culture, populism and how things can cycle in and out of popularity. Within that motif, he worked in furniture, stained glass, fabrics and more.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Isermann switched to more large-scale public pieces.
The first was on the UC San Francisco campus — a 40-foot-long chandelier-type structure using a repeating pattern.
After getting his foot in the door at colleges, Isermann began teaching at UC Riverside and often took his students on field trips to UCSD to view the works in the Stuart Collection, the university’s exhibit of public sculptures on campus.
“I fell in love with the campus, its architecture and art collection,” Isermann said. “So when Murals of La Jolla said they had this new site, I was really psyched.”
Looking for a contrast to the gray concrete buildings in the area, Isermann said he set out to create a mural with bright colors that offered a nod to his earlier pattern-based work.
“I want to do something that is almost an opposite reaction to the site. … The campus is very blank in terms of color and feels washed out in places. So I wanted to do something that would really stand out,” he said.
The resulting image is a series of 12-foot patterned pieces in shades of pink, orange and blue formed to make a grid, with an undulating pattern connecting them. It is intended to change in appearance when viewed vertically or horizontally.
“Never Turn Your Back on the Ocean” is “something melancholy but cheerful,” Isermann said. “There is a lot going on in the way the color wraps around that creates a three-dimensional effect. With all my work, it is deceptively simple, and the more time you spend with it, the more it reveals itself, and I love that about it. I think it’s important for people to walk by it every day. I hope it has that slow burn and slow revealing of itself.”
Having such a publicly accessible piece “creates an opportunity for art to be a part of the everyday experience,” he said. “Especially when you see it multiple times, you might come around to see something you didn’t experience the first time. I’m interested in having something that can be appreciated on some level by everyone. Art doesn’t have to be exclusive or elitist. There are so many different experiences you can have.”
The UCSD installation is the second Murals of La Jolla unveiling in quick succession, following “Ampersand” by Matt Rich on Sept. 30 at 7744 Fay Ave. in The Village.
Learn more about the program at muralsoflajolla.com. ♦
Originally Published: October 15, 2025 at 1:00 PM PDT