In the fall of 1972 Nancy Holt was invited to be an artist in residence at the University of Rhode Island in Kingstown, and during her stay she created the earthwork Views through a Sand Dune. Working with a group of students on Narragansett Beach, Holt inserted a five-foot long cement-asbestos pipe directly through a large sand dune on the beach. Tuned to the proportions of the body and installed through the sand dune at eye-level, the pipe piercing the dune serves as an aperture to be looked through.

Views through a Sand Dune developed directly out of Holt's first sculptures—sculptural “seeing devices” that Holt called Locators, which draw attention to visual perception and place. She described in a 1983 interview the importance of the sculptural properties of the artwork, which led on to her room sized installations—such as Holes of Light (1973) and Mirrors of Light I and II (1974)—and to the earthwork Sun Tunnels (1973-76). Holt's first Locators looked out the windows of her studio in the West Village onto details of the built environment, such as a cracked window or an exhaust pipe, and later Locators installed in traditional exhibition spaces framed painted ellipses, mirrors, and light as in Locator with Spotlight and Sunlight.  In Views through a Sand Dune Holt expands this circular visual language out into the landscape to frame two views: one view out toward the ocean and the other back toward the river and shoreline

 In contrast to Holt's other outdoor Locator works, here she uses the landscape itself as the support for her work. The constantly shifting sand dune holding the pipe and the ever-changing light on the landscape in the views through the sand dune highlight Holt's interest in the complex intertwined relationship between perception, time, and landscape. Views through a Sand Dune is no longer extant and has the potential to be reinstalled in the same site or elsewhere, providing the views of salty and sweet water are possible. As with Sun Tunnels, Holt created a related photowork for this piece, combining six images of this earthwork into a composite image.