This essay originally appeared in Mel Kendrick: Loopholes, no. 10 in the Dieu DonnÈ Lab Grant Program Publication series. Hand Papermaking wishes to thank Dieu DonnÈ Papermill and Lynne Tillman for their kind permission to reprint this material in the ON issue. Ed. NB: Think instantly of Wallace Stevens' poem, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, especially its fifth stanza: "I do not know which to prefer, / the beauty of inflections / Or the beauty of innuendoes, / the blackbird whistling / or just after." For Kendrick's last exhibition, he had shown sculpted wood blocks, painted a medium red. Three sit on the floor now, about shin-height, chunky, and in two pieces. Holes or openings in the bases suggest insides as outsides, gaps, incompleteness, and also sexual organs: mouths, anuses, vaginas, ears, nostrils, places to enter. NB: Dialogue between artist and writer, a process that can't be controlled: the art of conversation, with its unscripted turns, follows anarchic laws and is different from any other art; a studio visit's dynamic is also unlike any other art event. Artist's presence and intimacy of space effects stranger/critic; artist subjects self to critic/stranger's scrutiny, may feel violation of space. Vulnerability on both sides, in tradition-bound encounter (how old?). Kendrick ruminates aloud: "But what's the base, what's the sculpture?" The so-called bases, though technically supports, with their gaps, might be insecure. The base can be looked through, may be shaky; while a solid piece of woodó"the sculpture"órests on it. In painting, an analogous issue might be about the perception of image as foreground or background. Kendrick's question stimulates, in me, a visual reversal: the so-called base is now above Installation view of Loopholes, in Mel Kendrick's studio. All photos by Peter J. Russo, courtesy of Dieu DonnÈ Papermill, New York. summer 2009 - 23 and questions its foundation. What lies beneath? Does it provide stability, or, proverbially, is there a leg to stand on, anywhere? NB: How do metaphors serve art? Imagery from another language. Strict description can seem like an instruction manual, similar to book reviews that only tell the story. What are the possibilities for an artwork's reasons to be? Meanwhile, art responds to itself, criticizing and overturning its own paradigms, etc. Kendrick's prints appear concrete, tactile, abstract, with figurative elements; they also seem sculptural. The "surfaces are punctured," he says, and the prints have in them something about "wounding and repair." Ideas about human vulnerability, pain, and dependency occur. Kendrick jokes wryly about his "penetrating the inside" of the paper. He comments too that they exist at a "cellular level." Now I look at them as bodiesó"a body of work." The prints' movement is circular, maybe like the circulatory system, or maybe the energy is centrifugal, moving off from the center. Thinking about "wounding and repair," I wonder about aggressivityóthe lightning bolt image tearing at the center of most of the printsóand sensitivity, lines connecting to all of the objects. The "individuals" touch, however tentatively or delicately. NB: Always curious why an artist pursues, for life, a medium, form. Why is Kendrick drawn to certain shapes, materials? Freud says, "the object of an instinct is the thing in regard to which or through which the instinct is able to achieve its aimÖ \[The object is\] assigned to the instinct only in consequence of being peculiarly fitted to make satisfaction possible."1 The school of object relations follows Freud, but dwells more on the interrelationships of objectsóin Freud too an object is never just a thing, but also a person or personsóa world of relationships for each individual. During the second studio visit, I tell Kendrick that, for me, the prints have a somber quality, a sadness. Maybe it's their darkness. He's surprised; he hadn't seen them that way. (Later, he adds: when he talks about them, he sees them differently from when he worked on them.) I tend toward melancholic readings, but each viewer will project onto them, imagining in ways no artist can ever determine. NB: Freud's object that "make\[s\] satisfaction possible" works here: My interpretations "satisfy" me, and are, in a sense, object choicesóloves. My goals, aims, in looking, lead me to certain assumptions, conclusions... Is this where interpretation begins? Each print varies from and "repairs to" the themes of relatedness and separateness, bodies penetrating and disconnecting. There's darkness in them, but, contrarily, the prints keep returning me to Stevens' reassuring, optimistic Blackbird poem, now its second stanza: "I was of three minds, / Like a tree / In which there are three blackbirds." When read through the prism of those lines, many more than three "blackbirds" or "minds" exist in the prints. There might be a tree of life, too, one growing branches with leaves and fruit. NB: Fruitfulness, a tree bears fruit, like a theory might. How many ways in which I don't think. In writing fictionófiction derives from the Latin, facere, "to do or to make"óthe writer starts a sentence, one word leads to another, and there may be an unexpected ending. A visual artist also creates fictions, doing, making. Artists and writers have some control, choosing colors, say, drawing a plan, mapping a structureóeven opting for randomness can be a plan. Any medium's language has a cornucopia of meanings and histories, freighted by usage and tradition, while the heft of material and medium expresses itself and inheres in every practice. Kendrick explains that, in part, his attempt is "to show good and bad decisions." One mark or cut leads to another, there's a logicóor a necessityóto the way he proceeds. A bit later, he muses, wryly, "Well, it's always about what can't be known." Choices are conscious and unconscious; there's as much doubt as conviction in deciding what's best or right. NB: Kendrick also risks outcomes he will like or dislike; but he may solve problems he's set for himself. That way, artists answer questions. The other side of this equation: a viewer's experience. Experience! But whose do you trust? It's a peculiar fact of artists' lives that their work emerges Mel Kendrick, Untitled, 2007, 80 x 60 inches, handmade paper with pigment. Close detail of Mel Kendrick, Untitled, 2007, 84 º x 83 æ inches, handmade paper with pigment. with an acceptance or grudging acknowledgment of a common philosophical problemóthe unknowableness of outcomes, the indeterminacy of objects: "The beauty of inflections / or the beauty of innuendoes / the blackbird whistling / or just after." So, Kendrick's series, Loopholes, is aptly named. It doesn't shout out certainty or contentment, but considers them; and, while one should never judge a book by its cover, or art by its title, the title does lend itself to ambiguousness, openings, alternatives, ways out. For the viewer, looking and not knowing what exactly one is seeing creates a space for wondering, fantasizing, even satisfying some inchoate drive. ___________ notes 1. Quotations from Freud can be found in The Language of Psychoanalysis, by J. Laplanche and J.-B. Pontalis, translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1973).