Snake Path: snake coiling around the Garden of Eden

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."

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.

Geisel Library appears in the background.

• 1992

• Stuart Collection (San Diego, Calif.)

• Rittermann, Philipp Scholz (American photographer, 1955 CE-)

• Smith, Alexis (American mixed-media and installation artist, born 1949)

• Beebe, Mary Livingstone (American, born 1940)

Geisel Library: University of California, San Diego; La Jolla, California, United States

cast-in-place concrete; slate tile; mosaic (process); gardening; 565 x 10 feet

• Colossi
• Gardens
• Installations (visual works)
• Interactive art
• Landscape architecture
• Mosaics (visual works)
• Outdoor sculpture
• Paths
• Pavements (surface elements)
• Public art
• Sculpture (visual work)
• Site-specific works
• Terrazzo

• University of California, San Diego--History

• Milton, John, 1608-1674. Paradise lost

• American
• Bibles
• Contemporary
• Gardens
• Humor
• Paradise (doctrinal concept)
• Paradise gardens
• Serpentes

Point: 32.881072, -117.236762

• image

• No linguistic content; Not applicable

Architecture and City Planning

Garden and Landscape

Sculpture and Installations

• Rittermann, Philipp Scholz (American photographer, 1955 CE-)

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2022-10-27