New Public Sculpture Highlights Opening of Final Art Exhibition

Mel Kendrick's "Doube Core" will be placed in front of Scovel Hall and dedicated on March 29.

WOOSTER, Ohio - The installation of a new public sculpture will highlight the opening of The College of Wooster Art Museum's final exhibition of the 2005-2006 season. "Double Core" by New York City-based artist Mel Kendrick will be placed in front of Scovel Hall (944 College Mall) and dedicated on Wednesday, March 29, at 4 p.m. An exhibition, titled "Mel Kendrick," will feature 15 years of the artist's sculpture along with four working models of "Double Core" in The College of Wooster Art Museum located in Ebert Art Center (1220 Beall Ave.) from March 28 through May 14. The opening reception, which includes a gallery talk by Kendrick, will be Wednesday, March 29, from 7-8:30 p.m. An exhibition brochure with essays by John Siewert, assistant professor of art at Wooster, and Kitty McManus Zurko, Director/Curator of The College of Wooster Art Museum, will accompany the show.

Also on display during that time will be a selection of prints from the John Taylor Arms Collection in the Burton D. Morgan Gallery. Titled "Working the Land: 20th-Century Rural America," this exhibition was organized in conjunction with The College of Wooster's "Sustainable Wooster/Sustainable World" symposium, funded by an Environmental Analysis Action Grant from the Henry Luce Foundation.

Commissioned through a gift from The Howland Memorial Fund in Akron, Kendrick's sculpture is the culmination of a two-year process in which a committee of art museum staff, faculty members from several departments, and college administrators, reviewed a group of 13 artists. From this group, three artists were asked to develop proposals for the Scovel site, and Kendrick's model of "Double Core" was selected for the commission. Cast in bronze at Polich Art Works, Rock Tavern, N.Y., the finished work stands over nine feet tall.

"Kendrick decided to use rough-cut, stacked, bolted, and pegged lumber to build a full-size wood sculpture first so the reality of the pattern's making would translate directly into the finished bronze surface and retain the markings of its construction," said Zurko. "Making a full-size sculpture was far more labor intensive for the artist, but Kendrick felt that simply enlarging the model from the original would not provide the same visceral sense of an actual built object."

Siewert described Kendrick's work as sculpture that explores the act of making and the unfolding of form. "The self-reflexive nature of his creative approach has produced a seemingly endless capacity for variety and richness within the development of his art," he said. "Kendrick has retained a concern for systems and logic, an enthusiasm for setting up a visual problem and defining the parameter within which to engage (though not necessarily to solve) that reflects as well the artist's ongoing affinity for geometry and mathematics. With a measured precision, but no less importantly with an expectant, energetic sense of discovery and improvisation, Kendrick makes an object."

"Double Core" is an abstraction of geometric forms and has a particular relevance for a liberal arts setting, according to Zurko. "The committee saw parallels between Kendrick's process of discovery, which seeks to expose that which lies within and what happens during the transformative journey students undertake when they enter college," she said. "Like 'Double Core,' students unfold to new possibilities as they learn, discover, and transform during their college years, unveiling known and unknown facets of their being."

Kendrick was born in Boston in 1949. He earned his B.A. at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., and M.A. at Hunter College in New York. He received several National Endowment for the Arts fellowships and has had numerous one-person exhibitions, including those at the Hood Museum of Art in Hanover, N.H.; the Tampa Museum of Art; Grand Arts in Kansas City; the Margo Leavin Gallery in Los Angeles; the St. Louis Art Museum; and the former John Weber Gallery in New York. His public sculpture can be seen at the Toledo Museum of Art, and Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, N.J. His work is also represented in the collections of the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover, Mass; the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; the St. Louis Art Museum; The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

"We are indebted to Mel Kendrick for his insight and artistic vision that resulted in 'Double Core,'" said Zurko. "His energy and enthusiasm for the project were contagious, and his high standards and professionalism resulted in a work of public art that The College of Wooster can be proud of, both now and in the future."

The College of Wooster Art Museum is open Tuesday through Friday from 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 1-5 p.m. All receptions, lectures, exhibitions, and performances are free and open to the public. Group and class tours are also available.

Exhibitions and related events are supported, in part, by the Ohio Arts Council with state tax dollars "to encourage economic growth, educational excellence, and cultural enrichment for all Ohioans." For more information, call 330-263-2388 or visit www.wooster.edu/artmuseum.