Towards the end of the term the observant on the north end of campus would have noticed a sod box on the south end of Battell Beach, about 7′ high and 5 ‘ wide. Constructed by Cha Tori and Hannah King for Professor Sanford Mirling’s The Artist Collective class, the sod hut joins a long tradition of end of the term student projects sprinkled about the landscape. Being the end of term, it sadly didn’t stay up very long, a victim of timing and student vandalism. I’ve posted their narrative below, as well as a brief slideshow.

“This work began in Sanford Mirling’s sculpture class, The Artist Collective and as a response to the prompt: make an environment for something. Working together, Hannah and I initially chose to make a room in which you felt happier when you left it. As the project progressed, we decided to achieve this by contrasting the natural with the synthetic. Dealing with the feelings of happiness and sad-ness, we purposely left the room free of objects so that it would lend itself to impressions but not specific memories. We wanted the outside of the sculptureto appear seamless with the work’s environment, as though it were growing out of Battell Beach. As a material, sod is very strange because it is a naturally grow-ing product but typically used in highly manicured settings. While the sod allows the box to blend with and grow out of the grass surrounding it, as a material that can be manipulated into a box, it underscores the more nuanced relationship between our conception of the real and artificial.”