Through the Looking-Glass on Lake View Drive

My landmark was a white rabbit at the foot of a drive below a steep hill off Lake View Drive. And there he was one cool morning last week, standing slim, with ears reaching straight up a foot over his head.

At the top of the driveway were some figures on a patch of grass — a pensive, blue-green boy sitting atop a six-foot-high tree stump, legs dangling, and a girl crouching, staring up at a grinning cat. Large toadstools with orange caps were here and there, and beyond was a huge white egg. Farther on, a giraffe’s long neck and head peeked around the side of the house.

Jerry Glassberg greeted me at the door, his grip strong. For a man in his 80s, he was fit, like most sculptors who reach a certain age. Constantly working clay with your hands, lifting heavy materials and finished work will keep you that way.

Except, Jerry said, taking me into his studio, these days it was getting more difficult to keep up with the pace of his creativity.

“Used to be,” he said, “I’d work seven-eight hours straight. Now, a couple of hours, I’m finished.”

But not quite.

Near a long row of busts was a half-finished clay figure of a little fellow with a manic grin. “My Mad Hatter,” Jerry said, and then took me over to a table to see his hat. He said, with a mischievous smile, “People will take the hat off and sitting on top of his head I’m putting a frog.”

The figures in the garden, along with the Hatter, are for a project he has in store for his community — “Jerry’s Wonderland Garden” — where he plans to transform about three-quarters of an acre next to his house and studio into a lush tribute to Alice in Wonderland, with free admission.

All the major characters of Lewis Carroll’s two Alice books, “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” (1865) and “Through the Looking-Glass” (1871) will be present in a setting of plants, flowers, bushes and trees.

An Island resident for nearly five decades, Jerry has done large and small works, but two years ago, when he was commissioned to do one of his distinctive garden benches, he worked with increasing dread. “I hated it,” he said. “I realized that when you get older, you want to do something that’s important to you.”

About a year ago, looking out at his yard — an impenetrable thicket of brambles, briars and fallen trees that he kept wild by design — he imagined a garden populated with Carroll’s characters brought to life in sculpture.

“We’ll have ice cream, a golf cart at the bottom of the drive to bring people up who have trouble getting around,” he said. “And music.” He showed me the place where he’ll put the entrance to the garden, a gateway of slim trees and hanging vines. Enchantment is his goal.

He discussed the artistic process, a venture through the looking-glass, where time fades, and the mind is focused to a point where self and the world slips away. There is an Alice connection to that process.

“Through the looking-glass” is often misused as a journey where nothing is quite right, but in Carroll’s time, a looking-glass was a mirror. When Alice looks and sees her image, her adventure is taken within herself.

Creation is a portal into a new reality, he said, but it’s more than a personal trip for him. “I want to give things to people and see their appreciation.”

Asked his favorite character, he said, without a pause, “Alice,” mentioning her intrepid spirit, a perfect companion to have on any expedition, artistic or otherwise. But then he said he’s partial to the Cheshire Cat and even Tweedledum and Tweedledee. All of them will be present in the garden; some will have to be searched for, while others will be showing off in plain sight.

Alice never grows old, and neither does her story. Two examples are the modern usages of “snark” and “rabbit holes.” Carroll coined the former, a flawless word marrying sound with meaning, mixing a snake and a shark for a new beast, the “snark,” perfectly describing our modern notion of souped-up sarcasm.

As for rabbit holes, rather than Alice following the white rabbit into a new world, today the phrase is used in a political sense, which the Urban Dictionary describes as plummeting into a never-ending tunnel and “never truly arriving at a final destination, yet just finding more tunnels.”

Jerry has no idea how long it will take before he can open. It took nearly a year to clear the space. “I have a guy named Fidencio who works for me, and it took every weekend from March last year through November to clear this,” he said.

Fidencio is learning English, and before he started working on the property was unfamiliar with Alice’s story. “But now he’s giving me advice on what colors some of the characters should be,” Jerry said. “He’s getting it.”

We were standing next to Alice, the three of us staring up into the Cheshire Cat’s grin.

“I’ve always loved the story and everyone else does, too,” Jerry said. “I’ve talked about my work to people who’ve asked and it’s always ‘Oh, that’s interesting.’ But when I mention making this garden, it’s always, ‘Tell me more.’ Seems like I’ve hit a chord.”