Things may look a little different along South Side's Hermitage Trail these days. The Southside Trail Green Art ('08) Project, with Austin Green Art, has installed several art pieces and a "peace walk" along the trail.

Organizers say there always seeking ways to get more people to use the trails.

One project is a "moss chair," created by Carnegie Mellon University student Jonathan Park and his team of three others. Using quarter-inch plywood, the team built a 3x4-foot "egg crate" chair structure, filled it with soil and planted moss over it.

"We wanted to design and build an addition to the river walk that was visually appealing, but also for people who would want to interact more," said Park. "They can sit on the soft cushion of the moss."

The chair, built beneath a tree in an oval patch of grass along the trail, is part of a "peace walk" created by Jenny Lee and Miki Urisaka. The path, built between 23rd and 24th streets, winds and twists between mounds and foliage adjacent to the Hermitage Trail.

Another project involves pictures of the "Three Rivers Sumac Sprite," created by d'Alicia Kong Ledden and Hannah Soll-Morris to "celebrate the sumac trees and bring attention to Pittsburgh green spaces," they wrote.

Wheat paste pictures, which will decompose in a few months, are pasted along the trail. The head-only pictures show the round-faced sprite with flaming red and pink hair.

"They're just meant to be ephemeral patches of brightness as you drift," wrote Kong Ledden on her art blog.

For details of the projects, visit www.ecoart08.blogspot.com. The projects are part of CMU's ecological art class, taught by Bob Bingham, and were funded by the Sprout Fund.

First Published: May 25, 2008, 4:00 a.m.