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Photo by Bob Pennell "High Noon at Your Place," a sculpture by Southern Oregon University student Ryan Kitson, sits damaged on campus Friday. The artwork was one of many put up around campus by students as part of a class. Sculptures sprout around SOU as art students show their stuff BY ALEX BREITLER ASHLAND -- Strange images are popping up all over the Southern Oregon University campus this week. Sharks are swimming in a sea of grass. A steel tree is growing right out of the ground. And a set of footprints is diving into a pile of leaves. It's all part of a sculpture display put on by art students. More than a dozen pieces are spread over campus, some subtly hiding in the grass, others prominently displayed for passers-by. Many of the pieces are Earthworks, sculptures designed to make viewers more aware of their surroundings. Others are site-specific and hands-on. And all of them are interesting. "It's a nice, fresh way of generating an idea," says Marlene Alt, associate professor of art and instructor of the sculpture students. "Each of them is moving off and defining their own territory." Alt teaches a class for both intermediate and advanced sculpture students. The Earthworks display -- scheduled to be up until Wednesday -- is one of their assignments. Kathleen Snyder's "Noxious Nectars" hangs from a tree. Looking like odd, elliptical disco balls, several pineapples and mangos covered with mirror fragments dangle from a branch. The piece is a commentary on pesticides. Many of the students' ideas were inspired by Alt's lectures on the Earthworks movement of the 1960s and '70s. That's when artists began thinking that ideas move and develop in the mind as do natural processes of the Earth, like erosion. The new movement aimed at stopping the commercialization of art, Alt says. The pieces are shown publicly so that the creators can gain insight and stir public debate, Alt adds. "I really think students' work needs to be seen," she says. "They need that experience -- there's a liveliness about public art." Alt hasn't gotten a lot of feedback on the sculptures since the pieces went up on Wednesday, but what she's heard has been encouraging. "Once in a while people are irritated or provoked, but on the whole it's been positive," she says. Student Scott Schmuck, creator of "Collection," agrees. "But there's always a few people that say, `Oh, there go the art students again,"' he says. Though most of the sculptures are still set up, some were taken down after students received grades on the project Wednesday. Other are deteriorating from exposure to the elements -- and people. One piece, a steel cube titled "High Noon at Your Place," was somehow knocked over, spilling the water inside. Warm days haven't been kind to Eileen Bowie's piece "Transitorium," a pyramid encasing books and newspapers all covered with slabs of ice. It's mostly melted now and the newspapers are soggy, but Bowie says that's part of the idea. "It's a place of change," she says. Many students coming in and out of the library passed by Bowie's piece and stopped to check it out. Matt Resich summed it up in a word: "Interesting." Alt is equally impressed with her students' work. "It's a pretty rich project," she says. "This was a stellar group." Mail Tribune Copyright � interRogue & The Mail Tribune 1998, Medford, Oregon USA