This story was originally published by ArtsATL.
American history is plenty battered these days. We have toppled mythic heroes from their pedestals. Articles of faith, political as well as religious, have frayed and American principles we took to be bedrock, debunked.
Artist Lesley Dill offers a more positive meditation on our past in “Wilderness: Light Sizzles Around Me,” through May 14 at Kennesaw State University’s Bernard A. Zuckerman Museum of Art. Dill will give a talk at the museum on Friday, April 14, at 7 p.m.
Credit: Courtesy of the Lesley Dill Studio, Brooklyn, New York.
Credit: Courtesy of the Lesley Dill Studio, Brooklyn, New York.
Without whitewashing the country’s sins and defects, the Brooklyn-based artist honors 14 figures she considers noteworthy and personally significant. The roster encompasses religious and political leaders, artists and writers and one fictional character.
Summoning the diverse artistic skills for which she is known, Dill has created a vivid pageant of banners, sculptures, dolls and drawings to tell their stories.
Dill has said that language is her pivot point, be it literature or historical research. Words and letters are a key aspect of her visual vocabulary. She orchestrates a variety of typefaces, fonts, weights and colors to convey her subjects’ (or their enemies’) writings.
Words are everywhere. They dance across the large banners and drawings that line the gallery walls and adorn the sculptures that activate the gallery spaces.
The imagery has a graphic quality, too. Many resemble woodcuts with meaty lines and dense blacks, exemplified by the banner honoring Dred Scott, an enslaved man who unsuccessfully sued for his freedom.
Sculptural personifications of her subjects are exclamation points that activate the gallery spaces. Each is eight feet tall and suspended from the ceiling, with elongated proportions that further dramatize its scale. Apart from abolitionist John Brown, they are headless. Their feet are shoe lasts. Their bodies are suggested by a dress or suit.
Many are evocative of period clothing: colonial dress is suggested, for example, by pointy white collars. For others, colors or fabrics have symbolic effect. One of Dill’s sculptures of Mother Ann Lee, the founder of the Shaker community — whom followers believed sent messages after her death — is a translucent yellow organza dress, which hovers closer to the ceiling than the others.
Dill and her team have embellished the costumes with stitching and trailing threads as well as words and images. The use of textiles and sewing looks back to the feminist artists of the 1960s, who similarly elevated “women’s work” as fine art.
More to the point, eight of her subjects are women. Many of them, like preacher Anne Hutchinson, persevered despite militant misogyny. Reading her banner, you learn that the power of her oratory was such that the menfolk couldn’t believe she was a woman. They excommunicated her for her temerity.
Although the people honored here have historical, literary or artistic significance, they belong to a special subset: those with whom the artist identifies. They all were — and this is a word she has used to describe herself — fervent. Most were propelled by a spiritual calling or moral imperative. Many, again like herself, experienced visions. And many experienced a deep, sometimes, ecstatic, relationship with nature.
Wilderness is a mythic concept in this country with a long and conflicting history of meanings. On one hand, as in the Bible and Grimms’ fairy tales, it was considered a dangerous, evil place to conquer and tame. On the other, those like the Transcendentalists, abundantly represented in this history, celebrated it as a home to to find solace for the spirit. To be wild was to be free.
We know where Dill’s heart lies. She must have delighted in discovering that even fire-and-brimstone preacher Jonathan Edwards, one of her subjects, had a secret place in the woods where, as he wrote, “there came into my soul an inward sweet delight.”
When she began “Wilderness” in 2016, Dill intended it as a history of New England, her family’s home since 1637. The project expanded when she began working with Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa, which mounted the show in 2021. At curator Andrew Wallace’s suggestion, she added historical figures from other parts of the country. This evolution may explain why some of her subjects are more fleshed out, so to speak, than others. She and her team have continued to add pieces to the show.
Our understanding of our history is a work in progress, too, and Dill’s idiosyncratic approach is an engaging contribution.
VISUAL ARTS REVIEW
“Wilderness: Light Sizzles Around Me”
Through May 14. Free. Kennesaw State University’s Bernard A. Zuckerman Museum, 492 Prillaman Way, Kennesaw. 470-578-3223, kennesaw.edu/arts/zuckerman.
Credit: ArtsATL
Credit: ArtsATL
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