Bobbing on the top of the lawn wave are a trio of tubers, and we don't mean couch potatoes. They're tube-riders, ho-daddies of the big rubber O.

The sculpture, called "Tubers," was donated to the city by artist Jodi Endicott after being displayed atop The Contemporary Museum's concrete tennis court. They were part of her masters' thesis exhibition.

Endicott had been walking along Kailua Beach one day when she was struck by the vision of folks floating on tubes. They looked, to her, like they had been planted randomly on a flat plane.

According to Endicott's written explanation of the work, the scattered figures formed "incongruous relationships taking place that reflected society as a whole" and that the "loose, gestural handling of the figures alludes to an abstracted realism that is accessible to viewers as they consider the work conceptually, visually and formally."

OK. They also saved concrete and sculpting time that would have been wasted on the lower halves.

In the meantime, unlike much of the didactically formal, self-consciously grand or overly intellectualized public art placed around Honolulu, "Tubers" brings a goofy smile to passers-by. Ride the wild grass.