When sophomores Paul Hamilton-Pennell and Yoni Evans began to build an ark outside of Penrose Library in November 2010, they received a lot of funny looks and even more questions. The inspiration behind the ark was to prompt people to pause: it was intended to both  physically and visually interrupt their day.

Most passersby, however, wanted more of an explanation.

“We would simply say it was an ark, and for a flood, and leave it at that,” said Hamilton-Pennell.

“And then they would ask if it was for an art project, and then we would throw something at them, and repeat it was for the flood, or go inside [the ark] and start hammering,” added Evans.

Deliberately ambiguous and highly visible, the ark was an experiment in public art, a blank slate upon which observers could attach their own meaning.

Hamilton-Pennell and Evans believe that the process of construction was just as important as the final project. Their plan was a spidery  pictogram on the back of a receipt. For tools, they had a few hammers: enough for two workers and anyone else who offered help. The spine of the boat was assembled behind Fouts Center for Visual Arts and towed on an icy November night down the slick surface of Boyer.

Hamilton-Pennell and Evans made the decision to construct the ark entirely from found materials. Constructed from discarded wood left at local construction site dumpsters, the process of the ark became an artistic statement in and of itself. Unlike material only supplied to students enrolled in Whitman art classes, found  objects are available to all.

“With student art,” said Hamilton-Pennell, “one of my biggest issues is that we constantly . . . build sculptures, [have them] critiqued and then they have to tear down afterward. It’s a waste of materials, all that energy and effort . . . it’s desecrating the sanctity of that act of construction we’re trying to create.”

For a few weeks, the ark became a public space: littered with cigarette butts and trash. Then, on the same day that Evans and Hamilton-Pennell were contacted by Dean of Students Chuck Cleveland to move the ark, it was smashed and used as bonfire wood for the Phi Delta Theta initiation ceremony.

“One really important thing about public art is that when you put something in everyone else’s space it becomes everyone’s,” said Hamilton-Pennell. “Some people might hate it, and destroy it for that reason, that I would prefer [that] to destroying it out of lack of respect . . . what we wanted wasn’t a specific kind of reaction but just to see what would happen.”