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LUTHER COLLEGE > Fine Arts Collection > Outdoor Sculptures > Elegy #10
 


 

ELEGY #10

Fine Arts Collection #969

Artist: Edward McCullough, 1934-

Nationality: American

Date: 1981

Medium/Technique: Steel
This abstract sculpture is constructed of Cor-ten steel. It is anchored to a site selected by the artist after the work, which had been exhibited on the Luther College campus during the 1992-93 school year as part of the Temporary Sculpture program, was removed from its place in front of the Centennial Union. The Cor-ten steel is a twentieth century material designed to form a rich protective coating of surface rust. The artist utilizes standard welding and fabricating processes.

Dimensions: 46" x 70" x 50"

Location: Southside, Jensen Hall of Music

Notes:
This sculpture was built while the artist was an artist-in-residence fellow at Kankakee Community College in Kankakee, Illinois. It is part of the Elegy Series of ten abstract sculptures. The ten sculptures took seven years to complete. For the series, McCullough was inspired by the Rainer Maria Rilke's poem cycle "The Duono Elegies" written between 1912 and 1922. McCullough has written that the poem cycle inspired him to think about "nature in the widest sense of the word, and our transitory place among all else that's transitory within this common source."

The work was purchased from the artist by Luther College in 1993. At that time, McCullough wrote that the sculpture would look especially inviting in winter as the "snow drifts move up and into the forms of the piece becoming a part of the greater three-dimensional whole." All of pieces in the Elegy series of sculptures were intended to be installed out of doors.

In 1994 the sculpture was placed on the Inventory of American Sculpture maintained by the National Museum of American Art of the Smithsonian Institution. It was also reviewed by representatives of the Save Our Sculptures project organized in 1994, from Iowa State University, College of Design, and placed on their inventory.

Jane Kemp
Supervisor, Fine Arts Collection

 

Updated 10/17/07