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 with funds donated by Ruth and Wilfred Bunge. 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.
