Snake Path: path and bench inside the Garden of Eden
Creator
Smith, Alexis (American mixed-media and installation artist, born 1949) Stuart Collection (San Diego, Calif.) Rittermann, Philipp Scholz (American photographer, 1955 CE-)
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Rights Holder and Contact
Rittermann, Philipp Scholz (American photographer, 1955 CE-)
Description
Sculpture and Installations Garden and Landscape Architecture and City Planning 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 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." Planted in the garden are rosemary, Italian cypress, bay laurel, dwarf myrtle, olive, bearded iris, narcissus, pomegranate, apple, fig, rose, jasmine, ivy, daffodils, scented geranium, mint, etc. 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
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