EXHIBITION
I Heard a Voice: The Art of Lesley Dill
October 1, 2010 – January 23, 2011
Todd Herman
Chief Curator and Curator of European Art
Horsehair, bronze, handmade paper, wax,
ink, thread, foil, organza and steel are just
some of the materials Lesley Dill uses to
create works as varied as the cultures that
inspire them. Powerful, fragile, intense,
ephemeral, feminist, vulnerable, solitary,
communal and spiritual are terms that
have been used to describe these works.
However, it is words – communication –
that links these works to one another and
to the viewer.
At the age of 14, Dill’s mother gave her a
book of Emily Dickinson’s poems. This
was a decisive moment in her life which
she still recalls: “the words leapt off the
page [causing] a stream of urgent images.”
In addition to Dickinson, Lesley Dill mines
the image-generating words of Pablo
Neruda, Salvador Espriu and Franz Kafka.
“A single screw of ?esh is all that pins the
soul” wrote Emily Dickinson. Through the
eyes and imagination of Lesley Dill, this
becomes the work Word Messengers – two
?gures, black and white, rise off the ?oor,
suspended in the air by threads woven
through wings made of gothic letters
which undoubtedly spell out Dickinson’s
penetrating words. Simultaneously
referencing entomological (insect)
specimens and transcendence, this struggle
with life’s transience and spirituality is
typical of Dill’s art.
The second watershed moment in Dill’s
artistic life was when she spent two years
in New Delhi in the early 1990s. She
found herself surrounded by the ?owing
Hindi script which was unintelligible to
her. She found it liberating to enjoy the
pattern and design of language without
concern for meaning. “India is a land of
poetry and language. Words are put on
bodies, said over and over again in pujas,
mantras, chants, songs, prayer ?ags. The
appreciation for and involvement with
language was so present in this culture
that it set me much, much further on the
Far left:
Lesley Dill (b. 1950)
Word Queen of Laughter
2007
foil, organza, wire, paint, steel
Frederick R. Weisman Art
Foundation, Los Angeles, CA
Above:
The artist
Left:
Lesley Dill (b. 1950)
Word Messengers (A Single Screw
of Flesh is All That Pins the Soul)
2006
organza, ribbon, silk, glue
Courtesy of the Artist and George
Adams Gallery, New York, NY
2
columbiamuseum.org