Step inside ii gallery (that’s "two eyes" gallery), and you’re suddenly face to face with 32,000 pounds of soil and sand. The art before you is a gigantic work that measures 7 feet high, 9 feet long and 4 feet wide.

Constructed by Sean Connelly, a self-described interdisciplinary designer, "A Small Area of Land (Kaka‘ako Earth Room)" is a prismatic sculpture comprising land extracted from areas of Oahu including Wai­ma­nalo, Wai­anae and Mili­lani.

Given the piece’s scale and ambition, not to mention visual and conceptual power, it’s shocking to discover that this is Connelly’s first solo exhibition.

Born in Hawaii, Connelly attended Castle High School and earned both an undergraduate degree in environmental design and a doctorate in architecture from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. If Connelly’s background sounds unconventional for a fine artist, perhaps that’s one reason "A Small Area of Land" is strikingly unconventional as well — and worth seeing in person.

Take a moment to walk around the piece and you quickly realize it’s not a fixed, static object, but a work that constantly changes depending on where you stand. From one angle it takes on the shape of a monolithic wall of dirt, menacing given its scale; at another it looks slender and minimal, a geometric sculpture at home in its white-walled cubic setting. From yet another perspective it reveals itself literally as volcanic soil and coral sand.

What led Connelly to create such a laborious piece — one that required the help of more than 60 volunteers and took two weeks to install — has much to do with an installation he encountered in Manhattan in the SoHo neighborhood. There he visited artist Walter De Maria’s interior earth sculpture, "The New York Earth Room," a second-floor loft filled waist-high with dirt. The piece became Connelly’s starting point for this show and his foray into contemporary art.

Conceived under the guidance of Trisha Lagaso Goldberg, an artist, curator and project director for the Art in Public Places program at the State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, "A Small Area of Land" aims to address the future of Hawaii’s land and natural resources.

By hauling dirt and sand into a gallery in Kakaako, Connelly challenges his audience to reconsider two of Hawaii’s most recognizable materials in a new way. He encourages thought about the future of these politically charged and highly valued commodities. What will Hono­lulu, the beachfront or any other area of land look like in 50 years? In 100 years?

Connelly aspires to kick-start countless conversations about the means of producing a self-sustainable Hawaii for the future. His exhibition asks far more questions than it provides answers.

Hopefully, the next time you sink your toes into the sand at a favorite beach or stroll by a construction site replete with red dirt, you will recall Connelly’s architectural intervention in Kakaako and the questions it raises about the future of Hawaii.

The installation also raises an interesting point about the future of contemporary art in Hawaii. That this is a noncommercial piece organized by an independent curator, on display at an alternative venue, sheds light on a new hybrid model of contemporary art exhibitions locally.

Works of art, if they are successful, help you see familiar things in new and unforeseen ways. "A Small Area of Land" does just that by making a molehill of soil and sand into a mountain of ideas and questions.