Media Contact: Pat JaCoby, (858) 534-7404, or  Jan Jennings, (858) 822-1684

LANDMARKS CELEBRATES STUART COLLECTION 
NOV. 3 ANNIVERSARY

Artist Alexis Smith’s Snake Path came about after a dream she had about “a snake you could walk on,” while musician/sculptor Terry Allen’s singing and talking Trees represented to him “a breath of fresh air” amid campus architecture – a music tree and a “poetree.”

Smith and Allen will be among artists participating in the Nov. 3 celebration of the 20th anniversary of the Stuart Collection of  site-specific art works at the University of California, San Diego. The 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. symposium of artists will be moderated by Hugh Davies, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, (MCA,SD) and John Walsh, director emeritus of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles. It will be held in the UCSD Price Center Theatre.

Allen also will play, with his Panhandle Mystery Band, country rock music for dancing beginning at 9 that evening in the UCSD Price Center Ballroom. Tours of the Stuart Collection will be offered in the afternoon. All anniversary events are free and open to the public.

Insights into the collection’s 15 artists and their works are presented in the just published Landmarks: Sculpture Commissions for the Stuart Collection at the University of California, San Diego (Rizzoli), available at the UCSD Bookstore and the MCA,SD Bookstores.

Smith was installing a piece, Same Old Paradise, at the Brooklyn Museum when she dreamed of the snake you could walk on. “It was obviously related to the piece in Brooklyn (which has a serpent),” Smith says. “but it was the first time I had ever considered the possibility of making a big snake for the Stuart Collection.”

The Los Angeles-based artist says she was initially drawn to “the sinuous shape of the snake,” then got interested in the “scale part, the surface texture.” As for the campus site for Snake Path, 1992, Smith says it is “perfect,” citing the biblical concept of the snake and the tree of knowledge played out via the artist’s snake winding up the hill to UCSD’s Geisel Library.

Santa Fe-based Allen was an artist non-plused by public art. “Big pretentious baubles,” he called it, “large heavy metal objects stuck out in front of corporations and institutions to show how rich they were.” That is, until he was approached by Stuart Collection director Mary Beebe to make a proposal, “to face my own music, as it were, my own prejudices.”

After many trips to campus with zero tangible results, Allen was preparing for a music trip to Asia when “I had the idea of finding a dead tree in the (eucalyptus) groves, covering it with sheet lead, and putting a sound system in it.” Voila! The embryo of  Trees, 1986. The finished piece consists of two trees with sound systems emiting songs, poems, and stories among the eucalyptus trees, and a silent tree near the library – interactive pieces which become a part of the passersby’s world.

Also participating in the 20th anniversary symposium will be Niki de Saint Phalle whose Sun God was the first sculpture, 1983, in the Stuart Collection.

The French-born artist, who now lives in La Jolla, was flown over the campus in a helicopter to select a place for her sculpture, and says of the experience, “ I was scared to death.” In deciding on subject matter, de Saint Phalle considered the roots of California as Native American and Mexican, and wanted an image meaningful on a spiritual level. “I chose an eagle.”

De Saint Phalle’s Sun God, a multi-colored bird-like figure perched on an arch near the UCSD Faculty Club, initially met mixed reviews. Now it is a campus gathering place, the inspiration for the annual Sun God Festival, and has become the campus mascot.

The Stuart Collection was founded in 1981. It is the fulfillment of a partnership between UCSD and James Stuart DeSilva and is dedicated to funding experimental and challenging public sculpture projects.

For further information on the Stuart Collection’s 20th anniversary celebration or on Landmarks: Sculpture Commissions for the Stuart Collection at the University of California, San Diego, the media may call (858) 534-2117. The information hotline for the public is (858) 822-5550.