Mel Kendrick was born in Boston in 1949. In 1971 he completed his B. A. at Trinity College in Hartford/Connecticut, in 1973 Mel Kendrick earned his master degree at the New York Hunter College, where Mel Kendrick was a student of, among others, Tony Smith. In those days he also made works for Dorothea Rockburne. Mel Kendrick had his first solo show at the famous "Artists Space" in 1974.
Mel Kendrick is particularly known for his sculptures. His works, made of wood ("red blocks"), bronze and rubber, show his preference for bulky geometric constructions. Additionally, Mel Kendrick makes charming paper works of "cast paper", a kind of papier mâché with pigments. These works are characterized by rounded vegetable-like shapes.
Lately Mel Kendrick has been making large sculptures with massive geometric forms, through alternating layers of black and white they obtain a light and playful stripe optic ("jacks" and "markers").
Over the course of his career, Mel Kendrick has had numerous solo shows, among them the exhibition "Monumental Prints" at Tampa Museum of Arts in 1990. Works by the artist, who was awarded the Francis J. Greenburger Award in 2008, are also on display at important museums and public collections, worthwhile mentioning are the Centro Cultural Arte Contemporaneo in Mexico City, the ‘Daimler Kunst Sammlung’ in Berlin, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, as well as the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis/Minnesota. Mel Kendrick lives and works in New York City.