Review: Lesley Dill at the Kohler

By Mary Louise Schumacher of the Journal Sentinel

July 9, 2009 

Sheboygan — The layered and shifting nature of language is something Lesley Dill learned early, from her father, a biology teacher and paranoid schizophrenic.

“I feel that I grew up in a psychologically bilingual family,” she’s said. “For me words existed naturally in duplicate, triplicate and quadruplicate context.”

It is that multiplying nature of meanings that is at the heart of Dill’s installations and sculptures, crafted from foil, paper, wire, silk and thread. Dill’s handcrafted works fill a gallery as part of the “American Story” show at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center.

 

A little later in life, something opened up for Dill when her mother, a speech teacher, gave her a book of Emily Dickinson’s poetry for her 40th birthday. Dill had been an English major but lacked the patience for poetry. This time, looking at the words on the page, reading the lines, brought buckets of imagery to mind. And ideas for art.

It’s that “opening up,” Dill says, that human beings prowl about for like animals.

“We are all animals of language,” she says. “All the words that were and all the words that will be lie sleeping inside our bodies.”

For her artworks, she borrows a line or so of prose, most often from Dickinson but also from Pablo Neruda or Salvador Espiru.

Letters and words made from paper or wire or other things become physically enmeshed in the art. They repeat, too, like obscured mantras. They stain skin-like paper or pierce bronze in typefaces, which run from Gothic to modern.

“Dress of War and Sorrow” is an armless frock that stands at the center of the gallery. It was inspired by Dill’s filmmaker husband’s trip to Iraq, where he documented the war.

The gown’s shimmery, taffeta-like folds also have a steely, armor-like quality. The fitted bodice and luxurious skirt, which spills into a long train, is created from silhouette-like forms. The metallic skulls, faces, eyes, hands and letters are sewn together with thin wire.

It recalls the intense corseting of the 18th century but explodes at the neck with a cyclone of shrapnel-like shards. It exudes ideas about violence and refinement, of disempowerment and restraint, of freedom and captivity.

For “Shimmer,” Dill used two million feet of fine, bright strands of wire that fall like hair over two walls of the gallery, cascading from a fragment of a Espiru poem, spelled out in wire: "You may laugh, but I feel within me, suddenly strange voices of God and handles, dog's thirst and message of slow memories that disappear across a fragile bridge."

In a documentary video playing in the gallery space, we see Dill working on "Shimmer." It's a physical, meditative act. She wound wire around a room-sized spool eight hours a day for about 9 months to create the stunning piece.

We also hear her reading Espiru's words, not getting it quite right, trying again and again and shifting her emphasis a little each time. Oddly enough, it is a wonderful way to be introduced to the poem.

Dill's work often features spills of thread and wire, many of which were inspired by something she saw while living in India for two years. Known as the Tongue of God, it was a ribbon of metal falling from the peak of a temple in Nepal, meant to carry words of desire and lament to God's ear.

"American Story" is an ambitious exhibit featuring 15 artists whose personal narratives are unqiuely American and often cross cultures. It is the second institution-wide show the Kohler has ever done. A review of the full show will run in next Sunday's Cue.