Page 10 University Daily Kansan, January 21, 1982
Sculptor satisfied with creation
By DEBBIE SEUSY Staff Reporter
When it comes to public appreciation of art, beauty is often in the eye of the beholder.
sut when it comes to artist Dale Eidred, sculptor of the "Salina Piece," it could be that accomplishment is in the eye of the artist.
And Eldred is satisfied with his accom-
pishment.
Eldred's work has taken him as far as Paris and Helsinki, Finland, but ironically his works have drawn more fire than praise from his home crowd in Kansas City, Kan., and the surrounding area.
A DECADE AGO, in Kansas City, Kan., citizens criticized the "Pylons," part of an architectural design Eldreden renoval project in the City Center Mall.
More recently, vandals tagged Eldred's "Sailman Place," which has yet to be erected on campus, "First Place, Bad Taste." Efforts to erect the 40-ton sculpture on the corner of Sunnyside Avenue and Sunflower Road were hailed last fall when alumni complained that the structure was unsafe.
Now, the "Salina Piece" lies unassembled and incomplete in the facilities operations storage yard on West Campus, awaiting studies by structural engineers to determine its sturdiness.
Studies to determine the 13-year-old sculpture's safety are fine with Eldred, but he said yesterday he thought the whole situation was ironic.
To begin with, sturdiness is the name of the game when it comes to Edeld's art. Edeld said he was an "environmental artist" who constructed his sculptures so that they existed without chance in all kinds of weather.
"It doesn't need housing." Eldred said of the "Salina Piece." "It stands by itself. It's meant to be a physical entity in the world."
when I designed it," Eldred said, "I had a studio out on large acreage."
Also, as those familiar with Eldred's sculptures know, all of Eldred's creations are in scale with the acreage they are designed for.
THE NAME OF THE SCULPTURE reflects that fact. It was designed by Eldred for KU alumunius John M. Simpson, a former Republican state senator who resigned his post and made an unsuccessful bid for the U.S. Senate in 1980. At the time, Simpson lived on a large area of land in Salina.
When Simpson moved to Kansas City, Kan, last February, he donated the sculpture to KU, saying he had no room for it in his yard.
"In Lawrence, Kan., 'Salina Piece' just doesn't work," Eldred said. "There's not enough land."
Bevond that. Eldred has his own
ideas about the public reaction to the sculpture.
"I don't think people look at things in terms of, 'Do I understand this?' " he said. "Sculpture is what it is. It's not alusions to things. It is very real.
"There's a lot you can't see until it
up. They don't even have all the pieces.
They've got two-thirds of the pieces.
The rest are in my studio."
ELDRED EMPHASIZED the physical qualities of the sculpture. He said a viewer would need to stand next to him and walk around it to get its full impact.
"I cast a shadow," he said. "It's like standing next to Stonehenge or a large stone. You have to look at it in size and scale, in relationship to yourself."
Eldred said he thought criticism coming from KU, where new and challenging things should be welcome, was also ironic.
"It's ridiculous, especially in a place where people would be open to ideas," he said.
Eldred said he thought coverage of the "Salina Piece" controversy didn't do the sculpture justice.
"I resent photos of it on its side," he said. "It would be like writing a play, and having someone throw a dictionary over the screen. It wouldn't play, pick it out." It would be like having a Da Vinci in a crate, lying down backwards, and taking a picture of it.
Because Eldred's background is in engineering, he said he had no qualms about checking the safety of the sculpture.
“There’s been a lot of re-examining since the Hyatt,” he said. “That’s fine, but it sort of puts things off longer and longer.”
Still, it's not as if the reaction over the "Salina Piece" has daunted Eldred's spirit or slowed him down. Tomorrow he will fly to Los Angeles, where he is working on a project, and a few days later he will be in Helsinki. He will then return to Dade County, Fla., where another art project is in progress.
NATIONALLY, ELDRED has designed malls, open-air museums and other pieces of sculpture in states such as Missouri, Minnesota and Georgia.
Locally, Elirded has done work at the Olathe Court House, Kansas City's Penn Valley Park and the Kansas City Art Institute, which he heads.
Negative reaction to his art is not confined to the "Salina Piece." In 1969, Edilred was hired as a sculptor to design the architectural elements of an urban renewal project in City Center Mall, Kansas City, Kan.
Eldred was joined by an environmental planner and ecologist from California, a graphic designer from New York, a lighting consultant from San Francisco.
According to Ralph T. Coe, who wrote the book, "Dale Eldred, Sculpture in
Richard Reynolds, a California Environmental planner and ecologist, concluded from a study of the state that Kansas was a unique picture of grassy land and flowing streams in the face of rapid urbanization elsewhere.
Environment," the artistic idea behind the design for the mail was "to try to come to grips with that vast, little-known entity called Kansas."
ELDRED SAID the urban renewal office, which received $23 million in federal funding to revitalize the Kansas City water district, is proving of the design ideas on the report.
Eldred said the final product was not what he had planned. In fact, Eldred said, he withdrew from the project before it was constructed.
"The whole thing was changed a lot," he said. "It was originally designed to be done in glass. There were streams, and a spillway at the end."
When the construction was complete, the Kansas City community, led by businessmen, protested. At the forefront of the controversy were 18 stainless steel towers, which came to be known as "The Pylons."
Eldred said the conception, placement and scale of the architecture in the mall were all his, but when steel was installed on the materials, he withdrew from the project.
Eldred had planned to construct the towers out of gass, to serve as a filter for traffic, light and water. He said he had planned to have steam rising out of the wells by a waterway, to produce "a matrix of glass, reflection and water."
Instead, the towers, which stood three stories high, were constructed of steel and placed in the middle of a rectangle of water, with spigots shooting streams of water in between them.
Eldred said public disapproval of "the Pylons" was a case of projection. The mall renovation had lacked cooperation between private merchants and the government, and when it was completed, merchants continued to go out of business and blamed the mall renovation.
WHEN STAINLESS STEEL was substituted for the bronzed solar glass, the towers lost the reflective quality that Edred had wanted.
"It's the classic case of 'Which comes first?' " he said.
"The quality of life is not just design. You need restaurants, bookstores, bars they don't have anything like that."
"You can't take a private owner and say, 'OK, be creative. Improve yourself. They've never grouped together."
Still, Eldred continued the fight to maintain the architecture at the mall after it was completed. But in 1977, six years after the renovation, "The Pylons" were removed in an attempt to appease area businessmen.
BECAUSE THE PROJECT was financed with federal money, regulations implement that the structure government property and could not be destroyed.
"The Pylons" were taken to the Kansas City lery warehouse in Kansas City, Kan., where, according to Kathy Flentle, a Kansas City involved in the robbery, they remain without cost to the United States, Kansas or Kansas City.
Federal regulations also stipulated that a committee be formed in Kansas City to study efficient re-use of "The Pylons."
"City officials and the community agreed that it would not meet for 25 years," said Flentle. "In other words, they don't want to do anything about
Eldred said his constant work on new projects blurred criticism.
"It goes fast and furiously," he said.
"My problem is having enough time."
"The projects I do are very, very well funded. I'm not the kind of artist who does exhibit for galleries and slaps a price tag on them. They cost museums up to £20,000 to mount, and then when the exhibit is done, they are dismantled."
With projects under and across the United States and abroad, the criticism Eldred incurd could be considered However, he is adamant that it is not.
"Nothing is trivial," he said. "You have to stand up for things, or someday when you need to stand up for something, you won't be able to."
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