Interview with Artist Lesley Dill

Photo courtesy of George Woodman


AHC: Can you tell us a bit about your process, themes & inspirations?

Lisa: I have to say that I am like all artists who have a continual desire to make things. At this point in my life I want my art voice to especially contribute to the world of art-making. What a silly pressure is this. Yet, it is the underlying current in the ocean that wakes me up in the morning. Then, on top of that, is the theme I am investigating.  I seem to need a big theme, so it can hold my mind, hold a range of materials, and range of scale. I wish sometimes that I could have a small intimate groovy theme…just image & text .But ..images and text…about What? In the past few years I have done large exhibitions/projects : my full length opera Divide Light in 2008;Hell Hell Hell Heaven Heaven Heaven: Sister Gertrude Morgan and Revelation exhibit in New Orleans in 2010; and Faith & the Devil in NYC in 2012.

So now for the past 15 months I have been researching, reading, reading, reading the literature of America in the early to mid-19th century. Jonathan Edwards, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, John Brown, Harriet Beecher Stowe. I grew up in Maine, and my ancestors came to New England in 1670. Many of them were ministers who got their training at Yale and Harvard and many were abolitionists. In my studio now, I am making large sculptures, large, medium paintings and drawings, and small figurative sculptures in marionette form of the people of this era. I might title this work The Wilderness.

Faith and the Devil Installation (Big Gal Faith)


AHC: What first drew you to art? Was there a specific moment in your life or turning point where it became clear to you that you were being called to create?

​Lesley: When I was 11, 12, 13 etc., I learned how to weave, hook rugs, and make prints from great Aunt Peggy and great Aunt Dorothy, who lived in Gloucester Mass. I loved working with my hand, and I also loved learning and reading. As a child I would go to the library and take out 5 books every week.

In college, I was an English major. When I went back to get a Master’s degree –I got an MAT in teaching, so I could make a living- and this degree was in teaching art. I thought that would be my life--Teaching and teaching art. After teaching high school art for a few years, I felt this urge rise up my 28 yr. old spine. A strong electrical ethical urge. It seemed to point me in the direction of art so I went to grad school at MICA, then moved to NYC.

​Thus, bit by bit the call to make art interspersed with the doubt to make art, and bit by bit I somehow became confident in the call.

Divide Light Opera


AHC: One of your pieces, which I love, is called "Dada Poem Wedding Dress" and I sense that Dadaism has had some strong influence on your work, could you talk some about that? Who are some of your other influences?

​Lesley: In the Dada Poem Wedding Dress, I was inspired by the “Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors even “by Marcel Duchamp.  I wanted to do a performance piece that addressed this rather misogynistic title.

Dada Poem Wedding Dress


In the performance, 4 women gently ripped off a dress with the language of Emily Dickinson on it to reveal a confident standing woman totally painted with the language of the poem “The Soul has Bandaged Moments.” We women midwifed this image of ourselves revealing ourselves as women of strong language and image.
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Sister Gertrude Morgan Installation 


AHC: You work with a lot of different mediums, clothing, puppets, sculptures, performance as well as photography and drawing, the style & detail of each one of these being so incredibly unique, do you prefer one of these mediums or approaches over another? As you're working out an idea do you know ahead of time which medium it will work best in?

​Lesley: I love the tactility, actual and metaphorical in different materials.  I don’t know,.. it seems things just emerge from the mind for me. Ideas come and resolve when I am on the subway, when I am watching Game of Thrones on tv, when I am reading.

Dog #2 (The Beast) Puppet


AHC: Do you have any upcoming exhibits or projects you'd like to tell people about?

Lesley: I am happy to say that Tandem Press and I are doing 9 pieces: Editions of 2 sculptural puppet/dolls, 3 etchings, and 5 photo-based prints. I am doing a project in Rajasthan, India in February 2107, a project and exhibition in Detroit in April 2017, and an exhibition in Colorado in 2018.



​To find more of Lesley's work and for further information visit her website at www.lesleydill.net