robert taylor homes

Nathaniel Mary Quinn’s Garden from the Robert Taylor Homes

The artist’s “Soil, Seed, and Rain” prompts discussion around artistic roots in community

BY JOCELYN VEGA I n late February, the National Public Housing Museum (NPHM) and Red

Line Service, an organization that helps provide arts access to Chicagoans experiencing homelessness, hosted painter Nathaniel Mary Quinn to share his experiences growing up in the Chicago Housing Authority’s (CHA) Robert Taylor Homes. The artist talk and dinner was held at the NPHM’s temporary River North location as part of the opening of Quinn’s exhibit “Soil, Seed, and Rain,” which was on view at the Rhona Hoffman Gallery in West Town through March 28. The event was open to all, especially those who have or continue to experience homelessness, and was supported by a $40,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Quinn welcomed the attendees, who were crossing the room’s rows of chairs to get plates of warm food provided by the event. He began by providing a grounding of his artwork’s roots, which “harkens back to my upbringing in Chicago, growing up with Robert Taylor.… Residents living in that community were not seen—particularly

as viable citizens of Chicago, as human beings.”

Quinn paused before adding, “But we were human beings. We had dreams. We had aspirations, there were things that we wanted to achieve. So, I was able to understand that. I feel very fortunate that, fast forward to today, that I'm in a position to make works of art that can highlight the underpinnings of one's humanity.”

The Robert Taylor Homes was at one time the largest public housing project in the country, and was inadequately planned. Systemic inequities and disinvestment led to its infamous reputation of overcrowding and a lack of basic resources and safety. However, Quinn reminded the audience that these inequities cannot overshadow the individual and communal lives within these homes and their resilient connections.

Quinn described an early childhood memory about his brother Charles, with whom he no longer has any contact. “[Charles] says, ‘Nate, you know, mom used to whoop you all the time for drawing on the wall. One day, you made a drawing on the wall, and she's going to spank you to teach you a lesson, right? And he stops her and says, ‘Wait, before you spank him, look at the drawing.’ And my mother and him looked at the drawing, and they both realized that there was some evidence of talent there. And ever since, my mom would let me draw on the walls of the apartment. The walls of the project apartment became my first drawing pad. And from that point on, I loved to draw.”

He continued, “My father would also sit with me at the table which at the time was like a piece of wood on top of milk crates. You know, this is real project living. This is the crème de la crème of the project living,” to which laughter burst into the room.

Quinn continued, “He would take the brown grocery bags from Super Jet. He ripped them in half and made them flat… and he ripped the erasers off my pencils. He would say, ‘Never erase a mark, for every mark that you make, you make for a reason. If you make a mistake, there are no mistakes. Find the way to use the mark.’ He also taught me how to draw from my shoulder. Most artists draw from the wrist, but my father said, ‘There's no real mobility here. Use your entire arm as your tool.’ He was my first real teacher. And this is someone who could not read or write and had no formal education. I still use those tools to this day to make my work.”

Quinn lived with his mother, father, and brother until he accepted a merit scholarship to attend Culver Academies boarding high school in Indiana, about a two-hour drive away. Unfortunately, his mother unexpectedly died the month after he started classes, and his remaining family left their former home later that year.

To honor her, Quinn independently adopted his mother’s name into his before graduating high school. “My mother never had an education,” he said. “She never graduated from anybody’s school. And I thought if I use her name, like her first name as my middle name, they will have to print that on my high school diploma, and it will say Nathaniel Mary Quinn. So, I kept it up the rest of my life.”

Earlier in the talk, he discussed the history of education in his family and the importance of that diploma: “Having two parents who were illiterate, couldn't read or write, and who had no formal education, [I went] to the local public school, which was a good school, but a school that in fact was absent of many other resources that more affluent communities enjoy.”