NEW YORK (AP) -- An art student whose whimsical plastic animals inflate over sidewalk subway grates is drawing more attention to the lowly air vents than they've seen since Marilyn Monroe's skirt flew skyward in "The Seven Year Itch.''

The animals, made of garbage or shopping bags, lie crumpled up over the grates until an updraft from a passing underground train fills them with air.

``When I saw a piece of construction tape flying off this grate one day I got interested in what that wind could do,'' said the artist, Joshua Allen Harris, who is studying fine art at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan.

Harris, 31, spent weeks developing his first animal, a polar bear made of white plastic bags. The bear became an Internet hit once an arts group posted a video of it inflating.

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