Sun Obelisk

Dale Eldred, Missouri
1984
Stainless Steel, Glass, Reflective Tape

Beam me up! Sunlight diffracted into rainbows transforms this 60-foot tower into a brilliant daytime beacon. The late Kansas City artist, Dale Eldred, "made visible the invisible" with this soaring sculpture.

About the Artist

Biography

The grandson of Finnish immigrant builders, Eldred was raised in  Minnesota. Eldred moved to Kansas City in 1959, fresh out of the University of Michigan. Within a year, he was named chairman of the sculpture department of Kansas City Art Institute.

Eldred possessed an imposing physical presence and was a college football fullback.  He was known to be resilient in the face of challenge, such as the fire  in 1991 that destroyed a studio that contained his library and many  valuable artworks.

Eldred chaired the sculpture department at KCAI for 33 years,  exerting a powerful influence on thousands of students, including: Shawn Brixey, Ming Fay, Michael Rees, John E. Buck, and the collaborative couple, (the late) Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler who met at KCAI. He also was the artistic director of Biosphere II, and was a fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Advanced Visual Studies.

Dale Eldred was a victim of the "500-year" flood in the summer of  1993, when the Missouri River inundated parts of Kansas City. He was  killed in a fall trying to rescue equipment in his West Bottoms-neighborhood studio

*biography courtesy of Wikipedia, website en.wikipedia.org