Lesley Dill
Her work, using a wide variety of media including sculpture, print, performance art, music, and others, explores the power of language and the mystical nature of the psyche.
[1] In 1985, Dill married filmmaker Ed Robbins, and their life together has played a role in shaping her work, especially in the places they traveled together.
[1] A gift of Emily Dickinson poems in 1990 proved to be important to the development of Dill's style, as she began to work the text of poems directly into her pieces, something that she has continued throughout her career with the works of a variety of poets, including Emily Dickinson, Pablo Neruda, and Salvador Espiru.
Her decision to experiment with painting text on human models and photographing these "living sculptures" was inspired by watching Indian women creating henna designs.
[2][3] Voices in My Head from 1997, in the collection of the Honolulu Museum of Art, demonstrates how the artist combines photography with text, embellishing the work with charcoal and thread.
"[4] Her work crosses traditional boundaries between artistic disciplines and includes printmaking, drawing, sculpture, photography and performance art, often used in tandem with one another.
In the 1990s, Dill began a project with Graphicstudio/USF in Tampa, Florida, through which she created several large-scale pieces which were hung as billboards around the city.
In 2000, the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem presented Lesley Dill, Tongues on Fire: Visions and Ecstasy, the artist's first community-based project, which included a performance done in collaboration with the Emmanuel Baptist Church Spiritual Choir.
In 2003, Dill's performance project I Heard a Voice, done in collaboration with Tom Morgan and the Ars Nova Singers, was presented at the Evergreen Cultural Centre (Vancouver).
In 2008, Dill conceived and directed a full-scale opera, Divide Light, based on the language of Emily Dickinson.
[8] The retrospective was organized by the Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, TN; and George Adams Gallery.
The show then traveled to the Mattatuck Museum, Waterbury, CT.[15] From May 29, 2021 - August 22, 2021, the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, IA became the first venue to open Wilderness: Light Sizzles Around Me, an expansive exhibition inspired by 16 historical and fictional figures (1591-1980) all of whom sought peace, justice, or a path to visionary self-expression in tumultuous times.
