The arts section continues to highlight the beautiful artwork around campus. This week the spotlight is on the largest piece on campus. Soaring to a height of over 30 feet, Huru, which means both hello and goodbye in an Australian aboriginal language, is the first work of art students pass by on their way to class.  And while its size is impressive, its jumbled form may make it hard to see the beauty of it.The sculpture is of a breed known as Assemblage. Assemblage is a unique way of sculpting because it lacks a lot of the careful planning that goes into most sculptures. For instance, most sculptures are made with very specific materials that the artist had painstakingly picked to be used for a specific purpose. In Assemblage the materials are basically the art themselves. The objects used to form them are usually waste materials salvaged for no other reason than because they look cool when thrown together.  Another main difference between Assemblage and more contemporary sculpture is that most sculptures start with a sketch, or several sketches in fact. Each part is planned and sweated over to ensure the magnificence of the finished work. Assemblage sculptures may have a general idea of what the figure is supposed to look like but mostly it is in the way the pieces fit together.Huru creator Mark Di Suvero was one of the first artists to use this form of sculpture. Di Suvero was born in Shanghai China, at the onset of World War II, and his family relocated to the U.S. where Di Suvero attended and then dropped out of public school. He supported himself doing several odd jobs including boat building. He began painting in 1953 and graduated from the University of California Berkeley in 1956.Huru is one of Di Suvero’s most famous works. Before it adorned the UMB campus it was featured in Storm Kings, the most celebrated sculpture park in America.Huru has one fantastic quality that is unlike any of the other pieces. Unlike most other pieces, Huru is unprotected. Unlike the other statues that are coated with sealants or fancy paintings and are kept behind glass, Huru stands out in the elements.Steven Pirrello, art history major at UMB, put it this way, “I like how it is a part of nature. Some mornings you can see birds lined up on it. You can watch it sway in the breeze. It even gets visibly older. You see it covered in rust and you can imagine how one day this great thing may simply rust away and topple to the ground, returning to its basic elements and once again becoming part of the earth.”The true beauty of the Huru is the underling theme of balance.  The statue stands on a massive cement block in order to keep its legs perfectly level, which enable the top section to merely balance atop them, which is why it sways in the wind. In this way, as Paul Tucker, UMB Art Professor, describes it, ” iIt is both sturdy and whimsical.”