Lizzie Zelter '22 Installs Massive Mural in La Jolla

Lizzie Zelter '22 has long been interested in interiors—the built environments we encounter in domestic, commercial, and bureaucratic settings—and how they invite intervention.

Zelter's latest work flips the script: a massive mural renders the kaleidoscopic interior of a discount store in Brownsville, Texas on the exterior of a building in La Jolla, California. Titled Southeast Exchange (oil on canvas, 21" x 27", printed on vinyl, 13' 9" x 47' 3"), the mural was installed on April 8, 2026 at 7540 Fay Ave, on La Jolla's central commercial strip.

Zelter encountered the titular discount store on a grant-funded road trip along the US-Mexico border in 2022, when she moved from New York to San Diego to found Two Rooms gallery, where she featured artists from the San Diego/Tijuana bi-national region for three years before closing this past February. Along the rows and rows of sports equipment, wigs, jewelry (and everything else under the hot desert sun), it wasn't a particularly nifty tchotchke or cheap kitchen appliance that caught her eye, but the mirrored, vertical panels hanging from the top corners of the walls, which multiplied the store's inventory in a fragmented, panoramic effect. Like an I-Spy game, the mural invites passersby to slow down and look a little closer.

At the start of her career, Zelter's work examined how people arrange their homes: the items they collect, how they arrange them, and by extension, how they live. That interest expanded outward to public spaces:

"I got interested in stores and storefronts as a way to show our culture," she told Ashley Mackin Solomon of La Jolla Light. "They are like artifacts of time. They can be seen as mundane, but I think they shed a light on who we are."

Zelter’s hope is that an item will catch a viewer's eye and provoke a certain memory or a feeling of déjà vu. Her first mural, Southeast Exchange was installed as the inaugural work of the Murals of La Jolla Emerging Artists Program. Executive Director Taylor Chapin described Zelter as the "ideal artist" to launch the initiative, which will garner attention for artists "who are earlier in their careers, but still demonstrating a strong and distinctive voice within their work."

Zelter’s work has been featured in solo shows at Sala de Espera in Tijuana and Encarte Gallery in Mexico City, as well as in La Jolla group exhibitions at the Athenaeum and Quint Gallery. She founded and curated the now-closed Two Rooms, an artist-run gallery and project space that promoted experimentation, critical thinking, and the creative process in the San Diego/Tijuana bi-national region. 

Southeast Exchange will be on view at 7540 Fay Ave for no more than two years, after which it will make way for a new mural by another emerging local artist.