Colorful leaves weren’t the only things adorning College Green Sunday.
An orange yarn art installation, totaling 24 spools and surrounding three large trees in the middle of the green, was put up by Anna Moore, a senior studying journalism and fine arts, and Katie Monroe, a senior studying general art.
“We wanted to do it originally by blocking a path in College Green. It would kind of interrupt their everyday walk,” Monroe said. “We wanted to get people to look at their environment and kind of interact with it also.”
The Ohio University Police Department would not allow the students to block the pathway, though, and originally told them they could not do the project.
“They were pretty strict about what they wanted us to do,” Monroe said. “It was just frustrating at first, but we didn’t have to change too much of our idea.”
The students had to go back to maintenance for approval before OUPD would sign off on the project.
Maintenance gave the thumbs up, and OUPD agreed, on the condition the project would be up for only one night and would be lit up at night so students could see it.
“They kind of wanted us to use an orange cone or caution tape, which we thought was kind of ridiculous, so it’s its own caution tape,” Moore said.
The artwork was for a project in Professor Lauren Rice’s advanced painting class. The only guidelines were to create a collaborative piece.
The artwork was made completely out of orange yarn bought at Wal-Mart. The yarn cost the students about $40 total.
The piece was put up at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, and it took them until 11:00 p.m. to complete.
“(The process was) all kinds of just trial and error,” Monroe said. “Then as we did it more, we decided to have it thicker on the outside and thinner on the middle, so it’s harder to see the inside, so hopefully people will actually go into it.”
The piece caught students’ eyes as they passed, and some stopped to examine.
“Maybe it means unity, because the two trees are tied together,” said Lucas Hart, a senior studying sociology.
Moore, however, said they weren’t aiming for quite as deep a message as that.
“Basically it was meant to kind of interrupt people’s commutes to class, just something out of the ordinary; there’s no real deep contextual meaning,” Moore said.
“I don’t want you to think about war or nature or anything. It’s just a fun interruption to your day that kind of draws your attention to nature and to something beautiful.”
je726810@ohiou.edu
