Dale Eldred

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 died in a fall while trying to rescue equipment in his West Bottoms-neighborhood studio.

Eldred expressed his desire to reveal natural phenomena. He created a towering sculpture in a Kansas City park that sprayed water in order to create prismatic light refractions. His emphasis increasingly focused on light; he used mirrors, pure pigments, gas flames, fluorescent paint, refraction tape, glass, neon tubes and other materials to create light effects. "I want the sculptures to remind us all," he said, "that our lives are inextricably linked to light, and that our universe is in constant motion."[1] He created the Light+Time Tower at the city of Raleigh, North Carolina designed to diffract the morning and afternoon sunlight into vibrant colors visible to the commuters who pass by it. His Steeple of Light, originally proposed by Frank Lloyd Wright for the Community Christian Church in Kansas City, was completed by his partner and collaborator Roberta Lord after Eldred died in 1993 before the sculpture was finalized in 1994.

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.

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.

Dale Eldred (November 9, 1933 in Minneapolis, Minnesota – July 26, 1993 in Kansas City, Missouri) was an internationally acclaimed sculptor renowned for large-scale sculptures that emphasized both natural and generated light.