This untitled work simulates an ideal view out the transom window above the door to the entrance rotunda of the original 1927 Carl Gould-designed Henry Art Gallery building. The viewer perceives a partly cloudy sky seen through the transom’s wrought-iron grating, but is in fact looking at a trompe l’oeil digital print covering the actual transom. The artifice is easy to miss until one pauses to grasp the real scene outside the door. If McMakin’s print of the transom were removed from above the door, one would be looking out not at the sky but at the James Turrell
Skyspace, a signature presence on the southwest corner of the museum. McMakin has long admired the Gould building. He sought to recall its past by subtly re-imagining the original view out the Henry’s front door, a door leading out to a gentle grassy slope far different from the bustling urban campus landscape of today.