Amy Flairty '02 FAA had issues.

The landscape architecture major was taking professor Christiane Martens' "Art in Public Places" class and had only one semester to produce a gigantic sculpture constructed entirely of cardboard. The structure would have to complement its outdoor environment, hold up to the elements and, perhaps most difficult of all, say something.

Amy Flairty poses with her public sculpture, "Winds of Change," as it stands on the Quad.

"You're trying to evoke senses," said Flairty. "You get really frustrated. ... It could flop completely."

In other words, she had a lot to ask of cardboard.

But that kind of challenge is what many people have come to expect from public art. From the Oklahoma City and Vietnam memorials to the University of Illinois' Alma Mater, public art can serve as a reflection of grief, a call to action or a signal for pause. Public art has been praised and derided, funded and dismantled. Yet many cities support public art with funding and by including stipulations for building projects to allocate a percentage of their budget to public art, often called the Percent for Art program.

For students in the "Art in Public Places" class at the University of Illinois, their semester of creating and exhibiting public art brought both conflict and resolution.

And more work than they ever imagined.

For most students, their public art education begins and ends in Martens' class. After completing construction on their project, students display their piece on campus for a day. For some, that's it. For others, their projects may go on to enliven the lobby of the Krannert Center for Performing Arts on the UI campus or Lincoln Square Mall in Urbana.

Through the Campus Honors Program and the College of Fine and Applied Arts, Martens opens class to students in all fields, not just art. Students' training in a variety of disciplines often leads to lively conversations and a variety of perspectives and approaches to their structure.

"It was really neat to see people who didn't have any art background," said Flairty. "We got to feed off each other."

Before they learned from each other, however, students had to hatch ideas for themselves.

At first, Flairty sketched objects she thought could represent her friend. Then she realized nothing would. In her portfolio, Flairty wrote, "I realized there wasn't any object in the world that could represent everything [Ryan] was to me, his friends and family." So Flairty tried to sketch a project that would give shape to her emotions. She sketched a hand, a labyrinth, and then she saw an antique fan. It became her inspiration, the turn of its blades mimicking the forward movement of her life and how she dealt with her friend's death. The project, "Winds of Change," also became about 12 feet tall in cardboard.

Because the class has no studio space allotted to it, students like Flairty had to find space to create where they could. Some worked in the barn of a pig farm, another in a tool shed, more in the basement of a church. Though the lack of space forces students to work apart from each other, it also helps bring other people into the project. "It really involves the community. They become [the students'] cheerleaders," said Martens.

Amy Larimer's "Alma Mater Insum," or "Fostering Mother Contained."

For Flairty, getting her fan to move, but not fall over, proved a huge challenge. The dilemma "actually shaped the final results," she said. She went through model after model in an effort to create what she hoped would be a sturdy construction come display day. Even with her efforts, strong winds tipped the fan once, and Flairty ended up using tent stakes to keep the fan upright.

Martens understands. "It's mostly the wind that is the destructive force," she said. Martens has created scores of public artworks displayed around the world, seeing them through from blueprint to metalworking to installation. She knows the impact of nature on art: "I'm telling you, walk out the door and meet the elements."

The minor downfall didn't sink Flairty's spirits or interest in her sculpture. "A lot of people were just amazed that it was made out of cardboard," she said. "They wanted to come up and push it."

Flairty didn't mind all the hungry fingers. "That's the whole purpose of art in public spaces," she said, "to interact with the public."

Veteran artist Christopher Vespermann '95 FAA would salute Flairty's goal of remembering her friend tangibly. As profiled in the September/October 2001 issue of Illinois Alumni, Vespermann helped design and build the Oklahoma City National Memorial, an array of 168 chairs, each on a lighted glass base, each remembering a person who died in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing.

"As an artist, there probably is no greater job than to commemorate a lost loved one," he said. "We weren't just making a bench, we were trying to capture a person that was lost."

For Vespermann, though, public art serves more functions than simply as a way to memorialize a loss. He suggests public art can provide food for thought, enliven an environment and spark debate. He also reminds that public art is all around us: the arches of McDonald's, the bull's-eye of Target, the flashing red and green of a streetlight each serving as symbols and focal points in their environment. "It's so hard to categorize [public art] into one objective," he said.

For many artists that objective is simply to encourage passers-by to take a moment out of their routine to appreciate a small — or not so small — pleasure.

"It ties into that need of self-expression," Martens said, and that people want to play and make things.