Elk Delta (Elk River Project)

Jim Sanborn created Elk Delta, which is also known as the Elk River Project, in 1980. The work took four years to complete and is constructed of aluminum and granite. Measuring twenty feet high with a sixty by sixty foot base, Elk Delta is a relatively large sculpture. The work is architectural, though abstracted. The name Elk Delta comes from the confluence of the Elk River and the Kanawha River near the sculpture. Sanborn related the work to Egyptian Pyramids, drawing parallels between their positions near rivers and their roles as emblems of a city. Elk Delta was created concurrently with a similar work in Baltimore, MD named Patapsco Delta. These two projects were Sanborn's first major commissions and laid the groundwork for his later work. Sanborn became nationally famous in the late 1980s and early 1990s for his complex and mysterious public artworks, such as Kryptos at the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters. Kryptos — and many similar works by Sanborn — features an encoded puzzle, which has yet to be solved.