The Figge Art Museum presents a virtual artist talk with Lesley Dill -- August 18.
Wednesday, August 18, 6:30 p.m.
Presented by the Figge Art Museum
A gifted and prolific artist dedicated to exploring the power of language and the mystical nature of the psyche, Lesley Dill will be the special guest in an August 18 virtual artist talk hosted by Davenport's Figge Art Museum, the award-winning talent on hand to discuss her artistic process and the works in her current Figge exhibition Wilderness: Light Sizzles Around Me.
With her artistic interests running the gamut from sculpture to print to performance art to music, Dill received a Bachelor of Arts in English in 1972 from Trinity College and a Master of Arts in Teaching from Smith College in 1974. After a period of teaching in public and private schools, Dill received a Master of Fine Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1980, although it wasn't until her late twenties that Dill began to consider a career as an artist. Before pursuing a career in art, Dill's exposure to art was mostly limited to the crafts practiced by various family members, including ceramics, linocut printing, rug making, and weaving, and as a result, some craft practices can be found in her art.
Over the course of her career, Dill has been the recipient of awards and grants from such institutions as the Joan Mitchell Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Rockefeller Foundation. She was also the recipient of the Anonymous Was a Woman Award in 2008, a Center for Book Arts Honoree in 2010, a SGC International Lifetime Achievement in Printmaking Award in 2013, and the Falk Visiting Artist Residency at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 2014–15. Dill was named a Fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation in 2017, and two years later, she received both the Smith College Museum of Art Centennial award and the Emily Dickinson Museum's Tell It Slant Award.
On display at the Figge through August 22, Wilderness: Light Sizzles Around Me features a uniquely inspired group of sculptures and two-dimensional works more than a decade in the making, with the installation including many works made expressly for the Figge’s presentation. The exhibition represents Dill’s ongoing investigation into the significant voices and personas of America’s past. For Dill, the “American” voice grew from early America’s obsessions with divinity and deviltry, on fears of the wilderness “out there” and wilderness inside us. The extremes of both shaped history and gave pulse and heat to the words of activists such as John Brown, Sojourner Truth, Mother Ann Lee, and Dred Scott. Dill has written: “These personas and their times stir something deep in my own family history and sense of self. I am compelled to explore this period in America’s history when limited access to a diversity of written word ignited the bravery of these figures in response to their times.”
The virtual artist talk with Lesley Dill starts at 6:30 p.m. on August 18, participation is free, and more information on the event is available by calling (563)326-7804 and visiting FiggeArtMuseum.org.
