ABOUT THE STUDIO
I make things because I love making things.
I come from people who felt the same way.
Trent Kendrick is an artist, ceramicist, lighting designer, and — when the conversation is right — an interior designer. He is based in Chicago, Illinois. He is a fourth generation maker.
He grew up in Iowa, in a Mennonite community, where making things by hand was not an aesthetic choice — it was simply how life worked. His great grandfather built rocking chairs from wood. His grandmother made quilts, and taught him young how to see which colors and fabrics belonged together — an education in composition and beauty that no art school could have replicated. His mother paints.
Nobody in my family called themselves an artist. They just made things, carefully, with their hands, for the people around them. I think that is still what I am doing.
The Mennonite tradition runs deep in that lineage — a belief in simplicity, in honesty of materials, in work that serves a purpose beyond decoration. And yet Trent's own practice has grown into something that tradition might not have anticipated: figure paintings that celebrate the human form, ceramics shaped by intuition as much as function, light fixtures that exist as much for beauty as for illumination.
That is perhaps the most quietly radical thing about the work — it is rooted in a tradition of humble making, and it has grown toward beauty and sensuality without ever losing that rootedness. The hands that throw the clay learned their patience from people who built rocking chairs to last a lifetime and pieced quilts from scraps because nothing should go to waste.
I want the work to cause people to pause. To feel happy. To feel connected — to the world around them, to nature, to their own humanity.
The studio began as Fifth Sunday, an interior design practice. It has since grown into something harder to categorize and more true to who Trent is — and to the long line of makers he comes from. Interior work is still taken, selectively, and only when the fit is right.
Commissions, collaborations, and interior inquiries are always welcome. The best projects begin with a conversation.
A LINEAGE OF MAKERS
Great Grandfather
Woodworker
Built rocking chairs by hand. Objects made to be lived with, touched daily, passed down.
Grandmother
Quilt maker
Taught Trent to see which colors and fabrics belong together. An early education in composition, beauty, and the art of choosing.
Mother
Painter
The most direct line to where the practice is now.
Trent Kendrick
Artist, ceramicist, lighting designer, interior designer
Fourth generation. Still making things by hand. Still asking what they will feel like in the room they belong to.
THE PRACTICE
Ceramics
Wheel-thrown and hand-built vessels and objects — each one unique, each one shaped by hand.
Painting
Oil and mixed media, often figurative — celebrating the human form as nature's most enduring subject.
Lighting
Hand-formed fixtures designed to shape a room through the quality of light.
Interiors
Select projects by conversation only — when the fit between designer and client is clear from the start.
EDUCATION
Harrington College of Design
Formally trained in interior design at Harrington College of Design, Chicago.
PREVIOUSLY
Studio Fifth Sunday
Interior design practice
Renamed Studio Trent Kendrick to reflect an expanded creative life.
Based in Chicago. Available nationally for commissions and interior work.