Snake Path: granite book (Milton's "Paradise Lost") and path

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."

• 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)

"Then wilt thou not be loth to leave this paradise, but shalt possess a paradise within thee, happier far"

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

terrazzo; mosaic (process); granite (rock); 568 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