Rising Stars: Meet Dylan Kendall

Today we’d like to introduce you to Dylan Kendall.

Hi Dylan, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Who remembers Hollywood in the 90s? I was in my 20s and bartending at the Gaslight/Opium Den. There were only 2 women behind the bar so odds are good, if you found the hidden bar on a side street in the heart of deserted, blighted Hollywood, I was your bartender. I was a college dropout. I turned the bedroom of my Los Feliz apartment into a ceramics studio, asked the drummer of DEVO to install a kiln in my dining room, and slept on the couch. For years the only activity that kept me from flying off the rails was coming home from the club, lighting a cigarette, and diving my hands into clay. I taught myself everything from soup to nuts and in a few years had these crazy, scary ceramic sculptures in galleries in two states.

Near my 30s I quit the bar and moved to Oakland – this is the hero’s moment. Each morning I would make coffee and look out the window of my two-story ceramic studio into the backyards of poverty. Helicopters, emaciated dogs roaming the streets, and gunshots peppered my days and my nights. A feeling I couldn’t shake crept into my world and within 6 months, I shut everything down, wrote a heartfelt essay to UCLA and relocated back to Hollywood. I believed that if ceramics kept me sane then the same – any aesthetic experience – could be expected for all people. I wanted to be part of that revolution which redefined the power of arts in our lives.

I wish I could say from that point forward, I lived a Mother Teresa life pledging to be of service to others and excelling in this commitment. I can not. After graduation and subsequently being fired from my first corporate “adult” job, I struggled. But a series of events pushed me to the streets of Hollywood where I met dozens of young adults exiled from foster care, high poverty and abuse to squatting in the neighborhood’s empty buildings. I saw myself in these kids and backtracked to the years I spent deep in my studio. A combination of chutzpah, smarts and charm came together to impress upon my network that the charity / street cycle could be broken. We could create actual change through empowerment and self-confidence – qualities that could be developed through arts-based learning. I was right.

When my foster son became a teenage father, I stepped down from the school I founded. I needed to cleanse with something lighthearted and joyful. I recreated a bowl with feet I made in my studio decades earlier and watched the little bowl go viral in only months. This is the company I currently lead and the one most people associate with me. From Russia to Japan to Mexico, customers around the world remind me that we all need lives filled with happiness and imagination. I’m still humbled by each sale even after 10 years.

In my ceramics studio hung a poster many years ago with a quote from Swiss kinetic artist Jean Tinguely – “Movement is static because it is the only immutable thing—the only certainty.” I still live by these words. We have unlimited power when we move forward together to better the world. I hope my work, both professionally and philanthropically, continues to be part of our collective inspiration!

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
As I mentioned above, nothing on my personal journey has been smooth or predictable. From graduating college in my 30s to taking my company through bankruptcy after a devastating manufacturing SNAFU, I like to think that each obstacle I met only made me stronger as I moved past it. Founding companies is an income-intensive risk and I think this is important to share. At the same time, mistakes are gifts and recognizing that moving past failure is one of the best ways to grow is a game changer and I hope my story opens that window for others to see through.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
A few days ago I was at a dinner party. I started to discuss kids with a neighbor and I mentioned I was a foster parent. My commitment to fostering aligns with my commitment to coaching incarcerated and post-release men and women which furthermore aligns with my choice to be vegan for people, planet and animals.

We have a massively broken system which impacts all of us daily – from climate to immigration to crime. Fixing this broken system requires structural change. While we wait for the slow wheels of bureaucracy to churn, I believe we each have something we can offer to someone who needs. This could be money, time, knowledge, a bottle of water, a baseball cap to stop the sun or even a hug. I believe that if we all do something at the individual level this collectively adds up to system-wide change and given how complicated our civil society infrastructure is constructed, impacting others and our planet through personal change is a good place to start.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.dylankendall.com
• Instagram: @dylan_kendall
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylankendall/