Path less taken

In 1979, the art history department of Emory University tried a little experiment on campus. For a Phi Beta Kappa symposium on “Intellect and the Imagination,” they helped commission a site-specific environmental sculpture titled “Source Route.” The artist was Canadian George Trakas, an earth artist highly regarded for his sensitive, intellectual approach to work that reflects on architecture and nature. To this day, “Source Route” is arguably one of the best examples of outdoor artworks in the city of Atlanta — and perhaps one of its most overlooked.

Recognizing the historical value of art is something you’d expect from an art history department. Ironically, in working with a living artist, they managed to capture something beyond the times in Trakas’ deceptively simple piece. The work is a narrow V-shaped path of steel and wood stretched down two sides of a steep ravine behind the Michael C. Carlos Museum. The path is straight — it travels between and is interrupted by trees. At the bottom of the path you have to step on rocks in the center of the stream to make your way up the other side. The narrow path requires somewhat of a balancing act to traverse.

Located beside “Source Route” is a bridge, which provides a shortcut between the Emory Quadrangle and the library. So why create something whose function is unnecessary? Why take Trakas’ path? Because by choosing this route you can see the gothic rampart structure of the bridge above, which would otherwise go unnoticed, and you’re momentarily removed from the campus and transported into nature.

A city and a human require the unnecessary. Emory and the city of Atlanta have expanded and developed much of its in-fill land. Here in the Woolford B. Baker Woodlands progress is stayed. Art and nature remain intact. Inadvertently Trakas and the art history department saved the development of this patch of land. Twenty-five years ago, artist and institution foresaw a path. Placing art in the landscape was a strategy for survival and survivability.??