an interview with Michael kendall

1. How would you describe your relationship to your tools? Your machinery? Also, your hands?
I’ve invested every extra dollar in tools for the past 4 years, so they’re mostly expensive. If our dollars reflect value and more specifically what we value... I see tools as a way to do something like a vehicle. A way to realize something I have not done before. Machinery is a different story.... When I began, I could only afford very old machines from farm auctions across Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois. These machines were almost always not working, and seeing as I had no skills when I began, it was a nice learning progression, both understanding how these things work and realizing much more about the way people used to live and how they thought. A machine over 100 years old has a different kind of spirit. It has a spirit that can be revived and renewed if you believe it to be true. My hands, on the other hand, primarily just take a beating. I need to be kinder to them.
 

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2. What is something about your woodworking journey that has surprised you?
It has surprised me, given that I had no skills... Like I couldn’t use a hand drill four years ago, I’ve been blessed enough to have my own store. What surprised me about myself was how willing, especially early on, I was to take on jobs I had absolutely no clue how to do. Oftentimes, I would have this idealist fantasy of how I would build my skill acquisition and document it and share it and all these other beautiful things... What surprises me is that typically, my knowledge came from necessity, having the pressure of financial obligations, and I was determined not to be a starving artist.

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3. Do you find in your practice that a thing’s purpose and a thing’s beauty can go hand in hand? But also, do you see a meditative function at work in the creation of the labyrinth-maze?
Absolutely. They should go hand-in-hand. They should build. Post offices is more beautiful. That should be an inspiring place. Think about it... You show up with an envelope and nothing but a little sticker, and somehow it arrives through the cold nights high in the sky to the ground, and is delivered sometimes all the way across the world... I’m a kind of artist who thrives on projects I’m inspired to do. If somebody wants something very plain and plainly done, fortunately, they typically don’t call me or know of me. On the other hand, I do receive some of the strangest requests. I would’ve never have imagined that I’ve gained a reputation for doing either strange or uncommon projects. As far as working on the labyrinth and these designs, the other thing aside from beauty and from function is meaning. Symbols. Language. There are times and there are things I make strictly for money, but I thrive and I live for doing meaningful work, which also requires finding meaning in your work. Sometimes it means creating meaning in your work. It’s best to have your own metric of success than to follow a collective metric.

 

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4. What will you title the piece you created for this project? What does the design represent? How does it become meaningful to you?

Jaula de Oro. It is a mariachi song that was originally introduced to me a few years back by another maker and phenomenal artisan named Giovanna. The name of the song means the gilded cage. There are many labyrinths, both seen and unseen, in our lives and in this world, and not all of them have a way out... Some don’t even seem to have a way in. They are almost a birthright or a curse. There are layers of colors... Natural tones of natural woods. Just like the way Paint has many pigments. Joining these colors and these woods also, for me, symbolize different things. I get a different feeling from different combinations. The feeling of creating a tile which resembles a series of lines containing or holding something... Those same pieces can be inverted from an image of a closed enclosure to another possibility of openness—of a clear way. I suppose it’s easier to invert a bunch of wooden tiles than it is to invert our own ways sometimes.
 

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5. What did your ideas require from you in this project?

My idea primarily required surrender. I’ve gone through many storms and tribulations over the past few months, so to have a great vision you wish to realize and recognize you lack the resources for much of that to be possible... Well, if there’s one thing for sure, feeling like you need something you do not have or possess certainly always leads to well... Nothing good.

 

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6. How would you describe your view when you started this project, and your view and perspective at the end of this project?

As the beginning of the project, I had mapped out how much time each morning I’d have to make, seeing as I do all of this by hand in order to have the raw material prepared for the artwork. At the beginning, I was just grateful to be a part of such an amazing group of artists and primarily took a backseat to absorb their ideas, thoughts, feelings, and interpretations. The language of what I do in this context must be a silent expression, and leading with that to me made no sense. By the end, I was held bent on smashing the walls of the labyrinth and finding that place so that way of penetrating my own limitations. I ended the project realizing that the real labyrinth is not a piece of art, but it is the way you live your life. The highest form of art is the way one lives their life. I suppose that’s where my focus is now.

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7. How were both conviction and crisis at work in this project for you?

Conviction is easy when you know you can do something. Conviction is like change. People make surface-level changes and convince themselves of it. They have improved when they are swimming in easy water. Try changing when you’re entire life is in crisis, bound by uncertainty, and under attack. With no stability, how does one find conviction? That’s one of the most remarkable things about the human spirit. The fact that it can. That’s faith.
 

8. How would you describe working with Michael F and Milenka? Is there anything you experienced working together that will carry with you, an insight, or a moment for some time to come?

I saw Milenka and Michael as spiritual guides in a way. Feeling and absorbing their own struggles and receiving these struggles through their individual, gifted expression helped me see. And I mean this in a way, most certainly, it has changed me for good. Removing myself from a solitary self-defined pattern of working and being so fortunate as to have an opportunity to collaborate with two artists who had that beautiful openness, with all its pain and yearning and greatness... That will always be in my heart.

 

9. What does the word “Unwoven” conjure for you?

On moving, it kinda goes back to the idea of taking that pattern of a cage, and then converting it. Returning it to its essence of raw materials. Taking something apart. Taking something apart and not destroying it... Sometimes threads combine us in ways that are not so good. I guess unwoven is a return to possibility. On the final note, maybe that very thread that served as the escape from the legend and myth of the labyrinth was the very thread that held it bound in time. Perhaps if we can unweave ourselves, the fabrics, textures, labyrinths, and prisons of our lives, we may finally stand at the shores of possibility. Through deliberate undoing, which at first glance bears no fruit nor does it reap anything resembling the quality of what we call value, maybe then and maybe only then can we thread the needle from a paradigm of our own. One thing is for sure… Over the past four months, I have surely begun unweaving far more than I have rendered a masterful labyrinthian artifact