Claremont, Calif. — The assignment that Michael O’Malley gave his Sculpture 1 students was as devilish as it was direct: Take an animal and introduce an element of unintelligent design. And the results, displayed along East Bonita Avenue where it runs into Pomona College’s campus, are as delightful as they are awkward—a bestiary of the inventively anthropomorphic and the morosely melancholic. A turtle with a crocodile’s head. A giraffe with grasshopper legs. A three-headed dog right out of classical myth. A beckoning Siren that is half woman and half alligator.

Mr. O’Malley, an associate professor of art and sculpture at Pomona, told me that the students built wooden skeletons for their creatures and covered them with cardboard. Then they used a sprayer to apply a concoction of masticated New York Times pages, rejected housepaint, and wood glue. The creatures have proved surprising durable, surviving in the wild—or at least along the curb—through a considerable amount of rain. (One student, Mr. O’Malley said, declined to display his unintelligently-evolved beast: a grizzly bear out of which Sarah Palin emerges, armed with a gun.)

I should add that photographing unintelligence turned out to be a challenge, at least for me—I kept getting caught up in the critters’ endearing expressions, instead of focusing on the disappointing traits with which evolution has furnished them. (I’ve been known to do that with people, too, but that’s another story.)  Anyhow, if you want to puzzle out the unintelligent-design aspect of each sculpture, you’ll have to visit them on your own.