Lesley Dill: A Ten-Year Survey
November 22, 2002 - January 12, 2003

This survey exhibition highlights the work of New York artist Lesley Dill. At once a painter, printmaker, sculptor, photographer and performance artist, Dill seems impossible to categorize. Her choice of materials and the scale of her work ranges widely. One of the most identifiable qualities of Dillās work is how she examines the function of language and its relationship to the physical. Her images and constructions explore the elusive boundaries between mind, body and spirit. In particular, her work uses metaphorical imagery to investigate the roles of language and clothing in cloaking or revealing the human soul.

In her early career, Dill often fashioned sculpture in the form of dresses and suits but had never combined the forms with letters or words. After reading early American poet Emily Dickinson, whose verse demonstrated a delicate balance between exposure and reticence, Dill began to think of clothing as an emotional boundary between the body and the universe. She also began to consider garments as housing for the body, which in turn is housing for the soul.

In the 1990s, Dillās dresses and suits began to be shaped by words÷words as a second skin and as the remnants of our physical existence. For almost ten years, Dill has been fashioning these exquisite paper sculptures. Layered with linguistic excerpts, often from Emily Dickinsonās poetry, these elegant and eloquent objects take the form of dresses, necklaces and female figures. This exhibition presents signature pieces in order to highlight recurring themes in Dillās work and her ability to address them through diverse media.

Born in Bronxville, New York, in 1950, Dill attended Skidmore College and Trinity College, Hartford, earning a B.A. in English. She subsequently earned an M.A. in art education from Smith College and an M.F.A. from the Maryland Institute, Baltimore. She began to work at Landfall Press in 1992, producing innovative editions that combine traditional techniques ö such as lithography, silkscreen, and etching ö with collaged elements. Still at an early stage in her career, Dill has produced an identifiable oeuvre and has shown widely in major museums and galleries, including George Adams Gallery in New York and Greg Kucera Gallery in Seattle.

This exhibition was organized by the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY, New Paltz.