Red, Yellow and Blue Poplar

Inscriptions

Signed and dated, in ink, on bottom surface: Mel Kendrick 1986

Label

Mel Kendrick works without preparatory drawings, responding to each piece as it evolves and remaining open to accident and visual possibility. While this seems like a thoroughly open-ended approach, Kendrick’s process is closer to musical improvisation. He starts with a clear idea of his sculpture’s evolution, if not its final appearance. He sees the stages of making his work as a series of variations on themes.

To make Red, Yellow and Blue Poplar, for example, Kendrick started with a six-by-six-inch block of poplar and marked the sides with red, yellow, and blue. He then made pencil marks on the sides and proceeded to use a power saw to carve the block into numerous pieces. To complete the work, he reshaped and reassembled the pieces into a dynamic spiraling form that fully exploits both positive and negative space. Even in the final work, the colored washes, now divided and appearing in different planes, allow the viewer to meditate upon and mentally reconstruct Kendrick’s process.

From the 2019 exhibition The Expanding Universe of Postwar Art, curated by John R. Stomberg Ph.D, Virginia Rice Kelsey 1961s Director

Course History

ARTH 16.2, Picasso: The Vollard Suite, Michael R. Taylor, Fall 2013

THEA 90, Contemporary Practices in U.S. Theater, Laurie Cherba Kohn, Fall 2013

WRIT 5, The Waste Land, Before and After, Melissa Zeiger, Fall 2013

Exhibition History

Churchill P. Lathrop Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, March 26-May 19, 2002.

Churchill P. Lathrop Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, March 29-June 15, 2005.

Cubism and Its Legacy, Churchill P. Lathrop Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, August 17-December 20, 2013.

Essays Small Wood Works, The Austin Arts Center, Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut; Lehman College Art Gallery, Bronx, New York; Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, Maryland; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia; Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art, Cleveland, Ohio, 1988-1990.

Main Lobby, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, September 16, 1997-January 23, 1998.

Modern and Contemporary Art at Dartmouth: Highlights from the Hood Museum of Art, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, September 26,2009-March 15, 2010.

Recent Acquisitions: Contemporary Art, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 24-April 12, 1998.

The Expanding Universe of Postwar Art, Northeast Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 26-December 1, 2019.

Visual Proof: The Experience of Mathematics in Art, Harrington Gallery Teaching Exhibition, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, September 11-December 12, 1999.

Publication History

Katherine Hart, Mel Kendrick: Core Samples, Hanover, NH: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 2002, fig. 5, ill. p.10.

Brian P. Kennedy and Emily Shubert Burke, Modern and Contemporary Art at Dartmouth: Highlights from the Hood Museum of Art, Hanover: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 2009, p.112, no.86.

Provenance

John Weber Gallery, New York, New York; sold to present collection, 1997.

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