The eye stares east from a steel berth in Pritzker Park at Van Buren and State, watching as lines of commuters board the southbound buses and pedestrians amble out of restaurants. Thirty feet high, with lines of bloodshot red tracing across the sclera, “Eye,” is a sculpture designed by Tony Tasset, an artist and professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

Tasset’s eyes, which are a medium shade of blue set off by his white hair, formed the basis of the sculpture. “I had a very super close-up photograph taken of it,” he said. On a recent morning, he watched as construction workers finished assembling the piece.

The eyeball, Tasset said, is a universal archetype, an image he’s used in previous work. He’s created a smaller version of the Pritzker Park installation for a sculpture garden in St. Louis, and recalled a project that had him photographing his son’s eye and blowing it up into a portrait.

The eye is instantly recognizable, but is also open to personal interpretation. Whether passersby see a critique of Big Brother before them, the third eye of inward-discovered wisdom, the all-seeing capability of a deity or something more mundane is up to them, Tasset said.

“It’s also just kind of goofy, rock and roll,” he said with a chuckle. “You know, it’s just a big eyeball.”

In that respect, Tasset said the sculpture could be understood even as a roadside attraction, the kind of thing that signs beckoning interstate highway drivers to pull over and see.

The sculpture was an outgrowth of an art project along State Street sponsored by the Chicago Loop Alliance, a business advocacy organization. Tasset’s piece “Cardinal” showcases a redbird in flight on 156 banners hung along the street. He said that the bird came first, and after the project finished under budget, he proposed “Eye” to the CLA committee arranging the installation. They accepted.

FAST — that stands for fiberglass animals, shapes and trademarks — of Sparta, Wis., engineered the piece.