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Rights Holder and Contact
UC Regents
Description
Architecture and City Planning Garden and Landscape Sculpture and Installations Smith's work for the Stuart Collection, Snake Path, consists of a winding 560-foot-long, 10-foot-wide footpath in the form of a serpent, whose individual scales are hexagonal pieces of colored slate, and whose head is inlaid in the approach to the Geisel Library. The tail wraps around an existing concrete pathway as a snake would wrap itself around a tree limb. Along the way, the serpent's slightly crowned body circles around a small "garden of Eden" with several fruit trees including a pomegranate. There is a marble bench with a quote from Thomas Gray: "Yet ah why should they know their fate/When sorrow never comes too late/And happiness too swiftly flies/Thought would destroy their Paradise/No more, where ignorance is bliss, tis folly to be wise." The path then passes a monumental granite book carved with a quote from Milton's Paradise Lost. "And wilt thou not be loath to leave this Paradise, but shalt possess a Paradise within thee, happier far." UC San Diego Library, UC San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0175 (https://library.ucsd.edu/dc/contact) Geisel Library: University of California, San Diego; La Jolla, California, United States
Type
image
Format
Cast-in-place concrete; slate tile; mosaic (process); construction (assembling); granite (rock)
Form/Genre
gardens public art sculpture (visual work) landscape architecture installations (visual works) site-specific works outdoor sculpture walkways
Identifier
ark:/20775/bb01722252
Language
No linguistic content
Subject
Contemporary Eden Allegory (artistic device) Snakes Allegories American Women artists University of California, San Diego--History Gardens Public art Sculpture (visual work) Landscape architecture Installations (visual works) Site-specific works Outdoor sculpture Walkways Milton, John, 1608-1674. Paradise lost
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