Lesley Dill is an American artist working at the intersection of language and fine art in printmaking, sculpture, installation and performance, exploring the power of words to cloak and reveal the psyche. Dill transforms the emotions of the writings of Emily Dickinson, Salvador Espriu, Tom Sleigh, Franz Kafka, and Rainer Maria Rilke, among others, into works of paper, wire, horsehair, foil, bronze and music—works that awaken the viewer to the physical intimacy and power of language itself.
Dill has had over one hundred solo exhibitions. Her artworks are in the collections of many major museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art New York, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. In 2017 she was named a fellow of The John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and is a Joan Mitchell Foundation Creating A Living Legacy artist and grant recipient. Her opera, “Divide Light,” based on the poems of Emily Dickinson, was performed in San Jose in 2008. In April of 2018 the New Camerata Opera Company performed a re-staged version in New York City which was captured in a full-length film by Ed Robbins.
In November 2019, Arthur Roger Gallery in New Orleans presented a collection of her work titled “Drawings: Some Early Visionary Americans.” In 2021, the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa will stage her exhibit “Wilderness: Light Sizzles Around Me,” which amplifies voices of the North American past as they wrestle with divinity, deviltry, and freedom.
The artist is represented by Nohra Haime Gallery in New York and Arthur Roger Gallery in New Orleans. Lesley Dill lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
