Gina Scott / Winonan

Everyday, students sit on the great stone star just outside a Winona State University lecture hall in the Science Laboratory Center. There, they catch up on homework, chat with their peers and wait for class. But do they know where the star came from?

“It’s a pretty place to sit,” first-year Jenna Adams said about the stone star. “When I’ve had extra time to just kind of look at it, I’ve noticed the details like the constellations. But mostly I hardly pay attention to it.”

This stone star is actually a work of art that was acquired through the Minnesota Percent for Art in Public Places Program. Titled “Stardust,” this piece features the world of sciences and the environment surrounding Winona State University. Lawrence Kirkland created “Stardust” using metal inlay and stone, and the piece is valued at $184,000. First-year Shaylee Kamp was surprised by this amount.

“I would’ve never known how valuable this was,” Kamp said. “It’s kind of funny how we sit on it everyday. I’ll have to look at it more often.”

Due to Minnesota’s “Percent for Art” legislation in 1984, state building projects are given budgets to use up to one percent of the total construction budget to buy artwork for the public place. All artwork is original and encourages creative spaces and opportunities for artists to display their work.

The Minnesota State Arts Board Percent for Art’s mission is to display works of art in and around state buildings and places with regular traffic by people. Working with representatives of specific buildings, architects and artists, the art is selected to best suit the purpose of the building and the surrounding area.

Much of the art at Winona State includes the town’s land features and resources. It is not uncommon to see artwork that shows rivers, wildlife, farm equipment like the piece, “Winona Trinity,” hung in the Science Laboratory Center’s stairway.

“Now that [the artwork] has been brought to my attention, it’s kind of neat that all this art was picked specifically for our campus,” sophomore Tricia Hruby said. “It gives you a great appreciation for it and it means a little more.”

The most recently installed piece is Alexander Tylevich’s “Ride On,” which is a glass, 3-D formed dichroic material steel, LED and terrazzo piece featured in the Integrated Wellness Complex, installed in 2010. However, much of Winona State’s displayed artwork was installed in 1994, including Robert Gehrke’s, “Flyway.”

“Flyway” is an approximate 15 feet by 33 feet steel slab, featuring silhouettes of the birds, which can be seen flying through Winona, and rests outside of Stark Hall. Looking up at “Flyway,” Hruby agrees students should stop and view the art more often on their walks to and from class.

“It’s easy to just walk right past things like this. I feel like we take all this [artwork] for granted and we might just be able to benefit from it by acknowledging that it was picked just for us to see it,” Hruby said.

Adams agreed.

“Art just makes you feel better. I think we all can agree that Winona is a beautiful place, and I think some of this art is a pretty big factor in that,” Adams said.