Target
1969
Styrofoam board and a grassy college mall.
A 24’ diameter target consisting of a 4’ bull’s eye and two concentric 1’ rings, 4’ apart, cut from 2” thick Styrofoam boards, were installed 2” under the sod in the center of the central campus mall at Pitzer College, Claremont, California, against the background of the cold-war years and pervasive notions regarding who was a target and by whom targeted. Although we were being regularly assured that B36 and B52 atomic bombers were always aloft ready to “counter attack” on our behalf, there was nonetheless a sense of doom in the air fluctuating with each day’s news.
At the end of one day, with student help, after burying the target, the same sod was replaced over it leaving the mall appearing much the same as it did that morning prior to the installation. The compressibility, impermeability and insulating qualities of the Styrofoam implants invite significant changes in the grass above as seasons pass. A variety of unpredictable factors act here: How hot the days, how high the sun, how regular the watering, and how heavy the foot traffic above all effect when and how this target may reappear.
I was told that later that year around commencement time the target had in fact reappeared dramatically in that central mall, its bull’s eye and rings clearly drawn in dry dead grass within a field of healthy green sod. Hot weather and under watering had called that image forward. Years later I viewed it myself at a time when only the edges of the rings were discernable as drawn by thin lines of singularly higher grass growth.
At the end of one day, with student help, after burying the target, the same sod was replaced over it leaving the mall appearing much the same as it did that morning prior to the installation. The compressibility, impermeability and insulating qualities of the Styrofoam implants invite significant changes in the grass above as seasons pass. A variety of unpredictable factors act here: How hot the days, how high the sun, how regular the watering, and how heavy the foot traffic above all effect when and how this target may reappear.
I was told that later that year around commencement time the target had in fact reappeared dramatically in that central mall, its bull’s eye and rings clearly drawn in dry dead grass within a field of healthy green sod. Hot weather and under watering had called that image forward. Years later I viewed it myself at a time when only the edges of the rings were discernable as drawn by thin lines of singularly higher grass growth.