Model for Salina Piece, Dale Eldred

Artwork Overview

1933–1993
Model for Salina Piece, 1969
Where object was made: United States
Material/technique: plywood; balsa wood; paint
Dimensions:
Object Height/Width/Depth (Height x Width x Depth): 76.2 x 61 x 38.1 cm
Object Height/Width/Depth (Height x Width x Depth): 30 x 24 1/2 x 15 in
Credit line: Gift of John M. Simpson
Accession number: 1984.0040
Not on display

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Images

Label texts

Exhibition Label: "Site Specifics,” Aug-2010, Susan Earle Dale Eldred worked at the intersection of art and science. He had a strong interest in natural phenomena, especially light. The artist and writer Jürgen Claus called him a solar artist, writing that his “optimism and strength were related to the biospheric elements of nature, light, time, and space.” The Salina Piece, for which this is a scale model, is now quite specifically sited on KU’s West Campus. The 35-foot high steel sculpture explores gravity and casts shadows, helping to define earth’s relationship to the sun, as it captures the experience of sunlight reaching the earth. It anticipates works Eldred did beginning in the late 1970s that, according to Claus, “were defined by light reflecting from surfaces.” The environmental quality of Eldred’s work is suggested by SnoWaffle, January 13, 2010, a work of guerrilla sculpture by Matthew Farley that was affectionately installed beneath Eldred’s Salina Piece. Consisting of snow packed to resemble a giant waffle, Farley’s piece turned Eldred’s sculpture into an oversized waffle iron-at least until the snow melted.

Exhibitions

Citations

Spencer Museum of Art, The University of Kansas. The Register of the Spencer Museum of Art: Baroque Art of Germany and Austria 6, no. 2 (1985):