Mel Kendrick (born July 28, 1949) is an American visual artist and sculptor known primarily for his abstract, three-dimensional forms derived from sliced and reconstituted wooden blocks.
[1][2] Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Kendrick discovered his interest in art-making through photography at Phillips Academy, Andover, which educated a number of important post-war and contemporary artists including Carl Andre, Carroll Dunham, Peter Halley, and Frank Stella.
[3][4] Kendrick moved to New York in 1971, where he initially developed a minimalist artistic style, with a strong emphasis on architectural forms and techniques deployed across horizontal space.
[7] Kendrick favored this approach as it allowed both himself and his audience to interact more directly with the art objects,[8] with the New York Times commenting that the resulting work "looks offhand, but is in fact complex almost to the point of craziness, Piranesi-style.
"[9] Often framing sculpture as drawing or "poetry in space,"[6] Kendrick has employed a wide range of materials, including wood, bronze, rubber, paper, and cast concrete in his work.