Mel Kendrick
Born:
Wenham, Massachusetts, 1949
Lives:
New York City
Work
Mel Kendrick's sculptures are often made of a single piece of wood, which is cut up, usually with a chain saw, and then reassembled, leaving the process of their construction-cuts, drips of glue, and structural wiring-clearly visible. In the past Kendrick has reassembled the elements into abstract, geometric floor or wall sculptures. More recently his reconstructed logs and trunks have maintained the integrity of the original wood form yet exposed the interior workings of the tree through careful carving and extraction.
Kendrick begins a piece by selecting an interesting tree fragment, which he studies carefully before changing. After thorough consideration of the shape, mass, and volume of the wood, he carves it into pieces; removes selected areas; then reassembles it, like a puzzle, into a form reminiscent of the original, yet clearly different in some way. In Reverse Stump (1995), for example, a massive chunk of gnarled tree stump has been cored, leaving the thick, craggy bark to be viewed closely from the outside and the inside.
In Drilled Burl/Stacked Logs (1995), Kendrick explores the relationship between original, natural form and manufactured, synthetic materials by pairing an interesting branch fragment with an orange, rubber version cast directly from the original. Given all of the attempts in art and life to imitate nature while we simultaneously move further away from genuine experiences of it, Drilled Burl/Stacked Logs challenges our perceptions of a "natural" piece of wood-which has been cut, resurfaced, and mounted-and its "twin" more obviously created through artistic manipulation.
Links
http://www.groundsforsculpture.org/c_mkendr.htm
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