A HOME IN THE UNIVERSE: KATE MCQUILLEN ON NIGHT HOUSE
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A Home in the Universe:
Kate McQuillen on Night House
By Miguel de Baca
Kate McQuillen, Night House (2015), printed styrene affixed to the facade of a home.
T he epistemology of the home is
complex. Home is a location that,
to quote feminist critic Donna Haraway,
the night sky. The second is an edition
of posters, screenprinted with whimsical
inks including glow-in-the-dark, metallic
a progressive enclave situated between
working-class suburbs to the north and
south, Chicago’s notoriously beleaguered
makes “claims on people’s lives.”1 It is and varnish, sold to fund the installation. West Side (Austin) to the east, and the
a physical place in the world as much Night House was part of the Second more homogenously affluent River Forest
as a place in discourse. A home conveys Terrain Biennial (23 August–30 Septem- to the west. The birthplace of Frank Lloyd
return. As a site, it is the beginning and ber 2015), an extension of the Terrain Wright’s Prairie style (his Home and Stu-
end of a journey. But as a body of knowl- Exhibitions alternative art space founded dio are located there), Oak Park combines
edge, home resides within us as indivi- in 2011 by artist Sabina Ott and writer historically significant architecture, lib-
duals, a habit of mind. Kate McQuil- John Paulett in the front yard of their eral politics and an atmosphere of toler-
len’s dreamy, cosmic project, Night House house, also in Oak Park. Their mission ance similar to what one might find in
(2015), plays with our instincts about was to generate a novel conversation artsier quarters of Chicago proper.
what, and where, is home. about public art, introduce a new rela- The Biennial expands the Terrain
Night House is a print-based work in tionship between contemporary art and Exhibitions idea—“site-specific art made
two parts. The first was a site-specific local community (there is an elementary for front yards, balconies, and porches,”
installation in which large sheets of sty- school across the street), and challenge according to the website—to sites around
rene printed with Hubble Space Telescope stereotypes about suburban space as con- the world. The recent iteration involved
photographs were temporarily stapled servative, boring and devoid of emergent 75 artists and three collectives at 60
to the façade of a house in the Chicago culture. locations in the United States, Canada,
suburb of Oak Park, in a way that sug- Suburbs, of course, vary in character. Cambodia and Denmark. Ott exercised a
gested the structure’s dissolution into The Village of Oak Park happens to be light touch, directly curating only a few
Art in Print May – June 2016 15
projects on her block, while artists and the same acronym as the National Secu- is it that you want to see? homeowners elsewhere were encour- rity Administration). No Such Agency I Night House marks McQuillen’s migra- aged to develop their own collaborations. is a wall-sized agglomeration of black- tion from the ambivalent constructs of Night House was installed on the house and-white monoprinted squares. On the the paranoid homeland to those of the of curator and writer Claudine Isé—a right, a silhouetted female figure drawn home, keeping in play the consequences 1911, American Craftsman, two-story to the proportions of McQuillen’s body is of visibility and invisibility. One of the house with an open porch, gabled roof shown holding a camera aloft, posed as inspirations for Terrain Exhibitions was with wide eaves and exposed brackets. the stereotypical tourist, blithely oblivi- the lawn ornamentation in the yards of Typical of its section of Oak Park, it is ous to billowing plumes of ominous black Sabina Ott’s neighbors, which defied the set back from the street by a modest matter. No Such Agency II applies the common invisibility of suburbia within yard and situated close to its neighbors. same technique to a 10-1/2-foot-tall cylin- metropolitan space. McQuillen’s Night McQuillen’s installation stretched 25 drical pillar rigged with interior lights. House embraces the wonder of strange- feet across the façade, covering the shin- The stateliness of the columnar form is ness in a familiar place. It positions the gled second story and the stucco porch undermined—deliberately, I think—by viewer in front of a house that is also pillars. the irregular seams between the individ- the sky and by extension the universe—a By day, the building showed that ual slips of paper, rendering it decorative, position of compelling coincidence uni- which is usually revealed only at night. mosaic-like. fying the intimate and the vast unknown. In crepuscular light, the façade withdrew No Such Agency shares the themes of One wonders if the human fascination into the blue and purple of the late sum- McQuillen’s X-Rays series (2012), pres- with outer space must in some way derive mer sky. At night, however, the installa- sure monoprints that depict gauzy from our sense of being perpetually mar- tion came alive when interior lamplight lingerie concealing matchbooks and ginal to it, invisible to it, comprehending seen through the windows showed it to pocketknives. Anyone who has traveled our smallness within its expanse. Night be inhabited. In McQuillen’s screenprint through an airport in the last 15 years House accepts being at home as the pre- (which employs the aptly named Neenah will instantly get the point: this is the condition for venturing beyond. “eclipse black” paper), the sliver of a wan- disgruntled mien of the 21st century, in I met McQuillen to discuss Night ing moon at the top left echoes a lit spher- which we surrender privacy in the inter- House, printmaking and the home. The ical lantern in Isé’s home office. Inside est of security. More than the specter following is an abridgment of our conver- and outside collide. of match-wielding fanatics, McQuillen sation. McQuillen’s work, most of which evokes the public consternation over takes the form of prints, has repeatedly the implementation of backscatter X-ray Miguel de Baca What motivated your dealt with the public and private self, the body scans at American airport security interest in Night House? What are the monumental and the vulnerable, and the checkpoints. To decline these scans, in issues present that drive your further pressure between assertion and oblitera- which TSA staff see the contours of the thinking in the printmaking field? tion. I first met the artist during her 2014 body under one’s clothing, means sub- residency at Lake Forest College, where mitting to hands-on inspection. McQuil- Kate McQuillen I think the big motiva- she created a two-part installation of col- len’s prints depict dangerous contraband tor in this project was taking something laged monotypes on the theme of surveil- sheathed within garments of erotic really solid and then turning it into some- lance (the title, No Such Agency, supplies desire, as if to prompt the question: What thing almost immaterial, making it feel Left: Kate McQuillen, Night House Poster (2015), screenprint, 20 x 16 inches. Open edition. Printed and published by Lights Out Press, Chicago, IL. Right: Kate McQuillen, Night House (2015), printed styrene affixed to the facade of a home. 16 Art in Print May – June 2016
KM The universe is our home. It is the
unknown, but it’s also our home. We do
live in it. Starlight is something that we
see and experience but it started so, so
far away. And that, to me, is an amazing
thing, that something so far away comes
to us here.
MdB Just recently we saw that Albert
Einstein’s prediction about gravitational
waves was proven—when two black
holes collide, there is a sound. And I just
think it’s astounding that there are these
antennae in Washington and Louisiana
that can pick up a sound coming from a
billion light years away.
KM I’ve always been interested in things
that are unseen or unseeable and mak-
ing them visible. The X-Ray work that I
Kate McQuillen, No Such Agency I (2014), collaged monoprints, site-specific installation at the did earlier was about those same ideas.
Sonnenschein Gallery and Albright Room, Lake Forest College, 138 x 168 inches. At that point, I was talking about surveil-
lance, that it’s a way to make the unseen
transient or changeable. I was interested KM Those works were amazing, and they seen. So this question about light as a
in the idea that you could take some- did have that haunting feel, like a rem- metaphor for knowledge, for understand-
thing that was steady and make it seem nant of something. The fact that those ing, has been in my work for years. Star-
unsteady. And along with that, working images were directly transferred from light in Night House is the evidence of
on a really, really large scale. It felt like it newspapers really brought that home. A something so, so far away and our under-
needed to be that big in order to get that print is usually something that has come standing of something so, so far away
feeling across. off of a matrix. But Rauschenberg’s spe- merging with our understanding of our
Night House was essentially a large- cific use of newspaper transfer makes it known space.
scale graphic that had a short shelf-life. seem as though we’re the matrix—our
There are other contemporary printmak- daily life, that is, in the form of the news. MdB That is a bridge to thinking about
ers who are working with these ideas: printmaking, too. The matrix is, in a way,
there is a lot of dialogue in Printeresting’s MdB In Night House, you’re cloaking a the invisible thing.
Ghost (an online publication developed by home in something that represents the
Amze Emmons, R. L. Tillman and Jason universe. KM The matrix is the thing that holds
Urban) with artists who are working with
ideas of cloaking and ghost-like things
that are changeable and fleeting. They
were looking at Night House as a cloak-
ing device; that I really liked, and I do
think there are ties in print to that. We
all know that prints are impermanent in
some sense.
MdB That quality is also what is so mov-
ing about Robert Rauschenberg’s Hoar-
frost solvent transfers on silk and cotton
(recently shown in “The Serial Impulse”
at the National Gallery of Art; see Art in
Print Mar–Apr 2016).
KM It really pulled it together for me to
see Rauschenberg’s work on something
that was not canvas. Kind of in between
a canvas and paper.
MdB When I look at Rauschenberg, I get a
sense of inversion or playfulness, but I never Left: Kate McQuillen, No Such Agency II (2014), collaged monoprints, site-specific installation
really got the sense of disguise or cloaking, at the Sonnenschein Gallery and Albright Room, Lake Forest College, 126 x 15 x 15 inches.
so seeing it on silk was transformative. Right: Detail from No Such Agency II (2014).
Art in Print May – June 2016 17
Left: Kate McQuillen, Matches (2012), pressure monoprint, 30 x 22 inches. Right: Kate McQuillen, Drop Point Blade (2012), pressure monoprint,
30 x 22 inches. Both photos: Stephen DeSantis.
all the power. The print goes out into the that they referred to—it’s telling. It’s house. And then over the course of the
world and it does its thing, but the matrix comforting. And it was really important few months that I was working with
is always there to be replicated and to to me that this piece appeared to have Claudine Isé, I got to know her and her
continue that process over and over and the Milky Way in it. The Hubble photos family a little bit. She has a daughter who
over. So in Night House, there was just the were way out in space. There was no ref- might be seven or eight, and she and her
one printing, but I still do have the digital erence point. It didn’t really feel like what friends would play on the lawn when I
file I made from public domain Hubble I see when I look at the stars. So I altered was installing. When I went to take the
Telescope photos. I could apply that to that starting image to make it look like final documentary photograph, they
other homes in the future. I would love to the Milky Way. I wanted it to feel like were out of town. When I got there, their
find more and more homes where I could when you were standing and looking at daughter’s scooter was leaning against
do this and then look at them collectively. the house, you were out in the middle of the front door. At first my instinct was to
nowhere looking at the night sky. So the take everything away—to have this pris-
MdB This is not directly related to what perspective is that of humans on earth tine photo that was just the house. But
you just said, but I was also thinking looking at space. then I realized that I wanted to have the
about a New Yorker article of awhile ago scooter in the photo as evidence that the
discussing this idea that the word “gal- MdB Your digital file is a composite, so it family lives there.
axy” is derived from the Greek word for shows a sky that cannot actually be seen That led to other decisions, like leav-
“milk,” and how milk has such a strong anywhere. ing the window shades staggered. And
connotation with femininity—I guess Let’s talk about this article you for- that was really unexpected. Dionne-
more specifically to womanhood, but also warded me by Arièle Dionne-Krosnick, Krosnick’s essay mentions that the house
domesticity and nurturing as one type of “What Do Houses Want?,” on the subject takes on the identities of the people who
femininity. 2 of houses having individual identities. 3 live there and then gives back to them
Thinking about Night House as an indi- in that way. That was something that I
KM The Milky Way is our home within vidual, a character, I was wondering what really wanted to keep in the photograph.
the bigger universe. When you look at you think are its dialogues and desires?
the Milky Way, it’s like a spilled liquid. MdB That reminds me also of installation
It’s something that flows across our sky. KM When I first pitched this project, work or process art. I’m thinking of spe-
The Greeks chose milk to be the liquid I was just thinking about cloaking the cifically Anne Wagner’s writing on Gordon
18 Art in Print May – June 2016
Matta-Clark and his architectural inter- but was equally about cultivating a com- MdB That’s a beautiful point.
ventions on houses, because I think that munity of artists. Chicago was a foreman
work involves a social context that exceeds in a different way. The project was about KM And again that’s visualized through
the gesture of cutting the architecture and embracing women’s work and encour- the light, and that’s something I always
becomes about the history and the context aging collaboration amongst women, come back to. Internal luminosity is a
of that specific site.4 grounded in an ideological standpoint. reflection of a person, an identity or a
presence.
KM I love his work because it is not only KM It was pretty much all women who
destructive, but also constructive at the made Night House happen. Some guys did I extend my thanks to Luca Ferincz and Karla
same time. In Night House, thinking about show up at the end to pack up the work Finley for their research assistance.
the house disappearing temporarily does on the house.
have a somewhat destructive bent to it. If Miguel de Baca is Associate Professor of
the house were not there anymore—there MdB You could have done it if you’d Art History at Lake Forest College, where he is
is something unsettling in that. wanted to, right? the chair of the American Studies program.
MdB By making it invisible, you’ve KM I didn’t have the insurance required Notes:
destroyed it. to do it. But [in terms of domesticity as 1. Donna Haraway, “Situated Knowledges: The
a gendered construct] I do think you’re Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege
KM Right. If I could do this project again right to notice that this happened on a of Partial Perspective,” Feminist Studies 14, no. 3
(Autumn 1988): 589.
in another location, I would do it on a house rather than some other space. It’s
2. David Owen, “The Dark Side: Making War on
home out in the countryside, where I relevant to the project. I’ve thought about Light Pollution,” New Yorker, 29 August 2007,
could put it up against a really, really executing it on other types of surfaces, 28–33.
starry sky. I would make it look more like like warehouse spaces, but the domestic 3. Arièle Dionne-Krosnick, “What Do Houses
it was disappearing. element became a huge part of the work Want?” Shift: Graduate Journal of Visual and
Material Culture 6 (2013): 1–18.
conceptually.
4. Anne Wagner, “Splitting and Doubling: Gordon
MdB As an aside, have you been to the The poster was another way in which Matta-Clark and the Body of Sculpture,” Gray
Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas? The community became part of the project. Room 14 (2004): 26–45.
biggest thrill is to see Donald Judd’s 100 It was essentially supported by friends
Untitled Works in Mill Aluminum (1982–86) and people who follow my artwork. So
inside two artillery sheds adapted with there was the public aspect of the art-
floor-to-ceiling windows. When the set- work itself, and then there was the public
ting sun illuminates the boxes, they vir- aspect of funding it through the print. I
tually disappear into reflected light. You think everybody who bought a poster felt
realize the potential of that work to trans- like they had a little piece of this house.
form the beholder’s perception of his or
her own space because you personally feel MdB In No Such Agency and the X-Ray
as though you’ve also been dissolved into Series, personal identity becomes public,
the radiant sunlight. It is a really interest- insofar as the works are about your own
ing experience, and one that, like you’ve body. In Night House, a family’s home
been saying, can only be available to us becomes public. The ideas merge the
when there’s no visual interference. personal, intimate, and even emotional.
That is, not emotional in a specifically
KM In this project, I had an interest in sentimental sense, but the work on sur-
taking on the role of a foreman, of some- veillance seems to be about violation and
one running a construction project. That measuring one’s personal reaction to how
is exciting to me as an artist and as a way much of yourself you’re willing to give
of working; I’ve found that I love putting up. You can read that in terms of gender,
together projects that involve not only the because I think women are always asked
physical making, but also the execution. to give up more of themselves personally
than men.
MdB In my book on the sculptor Anne
Truitt, I consider that when she was liv- KM In the documentary photograph for
ing in Japan (1964–67), her studio oper- Night House, the stars are the first thing
ated like a small corporation of which you see. But there’s also radiant light
she was the chief executive. She had to coming out of the windows that to me,
find industrial fabricators, locate places talking about light reaching out, refers to
to buy paint, and locate someone to sol- the people inside. That’s their light com-
der the edges of the sculptures. Compare bined with the starlight. Although it’s the
that to Judy Chicago and Miriam Scha- façade of the house we’re looking at, we’re
piro’s iconic Womanhouse (1972), which, really talking about what’s happening
of course, physically occupied a house, inside the house.
Art in Print May – June 2016 19
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