Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 8255 HIGHLIGHT: DILL ‘74 M.A.T. LESLEY DILL WORKS IN A VARIETY OF MEDIA, including prints, photographs, sculpture, installation and performance art. She also created the full-length opera Divide Light, based on the complete works of Emily Dickinson with music by Richard Marriott, which premiered in 2008. A distinguished alumna of Smith College, Dill is an internationally renowned artist whose work has been widely shown and collected by major art museums around the world. Dill’s Dress of Opening and Close of Being, the artist’s major gift to her alma mater, was created for the exhibition I Heard a Voice: The Art of Lesley Dill shown at SCMA in 2009 (and organized by the Hunter Museum in conjunction with the George Adams Gallery). This wire-and-steel structure, covered in a palimpsest of words and images of skeletons, joins a number of other works by Dill in the collection: a photograph, six prints and Paper Poem Torso (Exhilaration is Within), a wall-hung paper construction with a waterfall of words trailing downward to the gallery floor. The artist describes the sculpture as follows: In this dress of Being-ness. Her persona is a stately testament to the floral blossom of new life, and to the end of life with skeletons drawn from Tibetan art. Her dress is at once a gown of glory and also an armor as it is all made of metal shapes wired together. I believe in this, the affirmed femininity of the dress plus the warrior nature of being a woman in this life. I thought this art work [would be] particularly appropriate for Smith women.—Lesley Dill, Brooklyn, September 7, 2016 For Dill, “language is the touchstone, the pivot point of all [her] work.” The poems of Emily Dickinson were an early inspiration and remain a constant resource for Dill, who assembles texts and fragments from the ABOVE: Lesley Dill. American, born 1950 Dress of Opening and Close of Being, 2008 Steel, metal foil, organza, thread, wire Gift of the artist, Lesley Dill, Smith College MAT 1974 poems to build images. She also borrows texts from Franz Kafka and the Catalan poet Salvador Espriu. Trips to India in the 1990s, where she found words “everywhere”—on bodies and prayer flags, as calligraphy and in songs and mantras—also influenced her, not only in terms of materials but in a corresponding sense of spirituality. Dill’s early works were made from tea-stained paper and fabric. Her practice developed over time to include freestanding figures in the round in bronze and wire- and-steel, such as Dress of Opening and Close of Being.