Art in the Park: Kendrick’s Markers

Kendrick's "Markers" / Photo by Stephanie Nikolopoulos

Earlier this week I was making my way from one publishing house to another, and decided to take a shortcut.  Usually, I stick to 5th Avenue so I can window shop my way to meetings.  Monday, though, I decided to get back to nature.  I decided to cut through the park.  Typically, I try to avoid Madison Square Park.  All New York City parks are borderline sketchy, but this one always seems to have the most strung-out-looking people.  Rumor has it, that’s because there used be a meth clinic nearby that got shut down.  It’s too bad there are so many suspect-looking people, because it’s actually a really cute park.  Most notably, it’s home to the beloved Shake Shack.  But, it also has one of the most adorable little fountains, and the animals are really friendly.  One time a squirrel tried to eat from my hand til I got freaked out that it might have rabies and scared it away.  This past time, I saw two pigeons and three sparrows bathing together in a pond of a puddle.  The scene literally stopped me in my tracks.  It suddenly seemed more important to ponder the anthropological significance of birds of different colors and size sharing bathwater than to get to my meeting.  The other great thing about Madison Square Park, the thing I want to discuss here, is its art.

Each season or so, Madison Square Park features a new art installation.  It’s this really beautiful way of bringing art to the common man.  Whether you’re a meth addict or an editor, you have equal opportunity to view art.  Whether you have time to study up on the artist’s intent over a hand-spun shake or are rushing past on your way to a meeting, the art is there for you to take in and enjoy.  After all, it may be the only art you see that week.  Maybe you don’t have time to go to the Met.  Maybe you can’t afford the MoMA.  Maybe you feel claustrophobic at the Guggenheim.  That’s okay.  “Mad. Sq. Art is,” according to its website, “[a] free gallery without walls.”

Kendrick's "Markers" / Photo by Stephanie Nikolopoulos

The leveling of the playing field extends to the idea that you don’t have to have a fancy art-history education to appreciate art.  The art in the park is just there for you to experience.  It’s there to give you something to think about, and to expand your definition of art.  The installation up right now, for instance, is a series of five large black-and-white-striped shapes.  It’s the type of thing you can quickly pass by and still have seen enough of it to consider its larger purpose later.  As you continue on your way to your meeting, you can come up with theories about why there were five of them, why they were twisty-shaped, and why they were striped.  Or, you can just appreciate the modern shapes and color contrast against the lush greenery of the park.  And if you walk by even a few days later, you might wonder if your perception of the piece has changed now that the leaves are dropping from the trees.

If the artwork interests you enough, you can stop to read that the installation is called Markers and was created by Mel Kendrick.  Do some more digging, and you’ll find out the the source material for the installation comes “from the black and white marble found in Gothic Italian Cathedrals such as Siena.”  Those who are versed in history may remember that Sennius and Aschius rode in on black and white horses when they founded Siena, and that therefore those colors are very symbolic.

Kendrick's "Markers" / Photo by Stephanie Nikolopoulos

Here’s the official explanation:

The five new pieces that make up the Markers installation in Madison Square Park are at once radically new and quintessentially Kendrick; on the one hand a bold departure from the artist’s characteristic use of wood as his primary medium, on the other hand a natural evolution of the formal motifs and self-evident process that have become synonymous with his work.

Since the mid-1970s, Kendrick has developed a reputation for sculptures born of the play between addition and subtraction, destruction and creation. In Kendrick’s hands, blocks of raw wood are sliced and gutted, their interiors ingeniously reconfigured and reconstituted atop the remnant shell of the wood block from which they originated.

In Markers, Kendrick applies the same aesthetic and procedural methods to cast concrete. The black and white concrete is poured in layers, a new process and new material for the artist. For Kendrick, ever the process-oriented sculptor, these striations and the rippling surfaces for contain the fossil memory of the actions taken over time. The sources for the Markers works vary widely, from the black and white marble found in Gothic Italian Cathedrals such as Siena, to the simplest methods of marking: placing one object on top of another. Their location in Madison Square Park also references the numerous monuments installed throughout New York City park system.

The installation will be up through the end of the year.