Let no man go out of his place on the seventh day.
– Exodus 16:29
The wall encloses an area south of UCSD, roughly two miles long and one mile wide. On the north it borders La Jolla Village Drive, on the south La Jolla Parkway, on the west Torrey Pines Road, and on the east, I-5.
The wall is artfully constructed, consisting almost entirely of canyon slopes appropriated from the community landscape, and pre-existing walls and fences.
Where roads make a wall impossible – at Gilman and Via Alicante, Nobel and I-5, and along much of La Jolla Village Drive – symbolic walls are constructed by suspending wire over the roads. Here again appropriation is evident, with existing light poles serving as bases for the suspended wire.
In the few places where light poles are unavailable, stainless steel poles are erected specifically to suspend the wire. These poles are a step up in quality from the typical utility pole, and resemble the poles used in Robert Irwin’s Two Running Violet V Forms.
The purpose of the wall is to symbolically transform the enclosed public space into private space, enabling the traditionally observant Jewish communities who live there to lead better lives on the Sabbath.
The symbolic transformation of community into home… this is perhaps the best definition to date for public art.