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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 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
gardens walkways sculpture (visual work) site-specific works landscape architecture installations (visual works) outdoor sculpture public art
Identifier
ark:/20775/bb81927770
Language
No linguistic content
Subject
Snakes Eden Allegory (artistic device) American Contemporary Women artists Allegories University of California, San Diego--History Gardens Walkways Sculpture (visual work) Site-specific works Landscape architecture Installations (visual works) Outdoor sculpture Public art Milton, John, 1608-1674. Paradise lost
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