Lesley Dill: I See Visions
Lithograph on Muslin, Silk Organza with Hand-Sewn Elements
28 x 20 in. 2004

New York artist Lesley Dill’s work is showing at the Equinox Gallery in Vancouver (ending March 31st). An artist friend and I eagerly went to see it a couple of days ago and were not disappointed. This is the first time I’ve seen her work, and wished I’d known it sooner since so much of it resonates with me. The gallery website shows her amazing pieces, so have a look.

Here’s a wonderful review by Robin Laurence in Straight, beginning with this:

Language, fibre, body, and spirit–all weave together in this exhibition of new and recent work by New York artist Lesley Dill. Deeply poetic in both impulse and content, Dill’s interdisciplinary art–which includes photography, sculpture, printmaking, and performance–also manages to invoke a number of theoretical concerns. These include the ways in which gender is socially constructed and the body is inscribed with language. Not that we’re overwhelmed by post-semiotic ideas as soon as we walk into the gallery; the first impression here is one of sensuous beauty.

It is all very compelling work. Her delicately layered prints on muslin and silk organza, such as ‘I See Visions’ (above), ‘Listen’ and ‘Blue Voice’ are very inspiring and timely for me while working on my own series of layered prints.

Dill has done a lot of her prints at Landfall Press:
Lesley’s Dill’s images and constructions explore the nature of the body and its clothing. In particular, her work uses metaphoric imagery to explore the role of language in cloaking or revealing the human soul.

And at Graphicstudio:
… Lesley Dill is on the forefront of the trend in contemporary art of using visuals with language, lending an edge to their fusion by peeling away stereotypes to create a fresh and unique vision. Widely acclaimed for her sculptural, print and installation works which draw upon the poetry of another American woman artist, Emily Dickinson, Dill combines the word with the image, the fragile with the indestructible, the handmade with the computer-generated. A meeting of art and poetry, her works are rich in texture and temporal associations, evoking elusive, layered meanings.

More images can be seen at Greg Kucera Gallery in Seattle and at artnet.

Installation photo of a section of Pnina Granirer’s exhibition “Synchronicity”, at Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery

For some time now I have been working on several larger works incorporating a layer of inket-printed clear mylar over prints on paper. I’ve been challenged over issues with fastening these layers together, and how to hang them freely without frames. Some of my Nexus/Blue prints were part of the early experiments.

Then I heard about our well-known Romanian-Canadian Pnina Granirer’s new exhibition where she uses life size drawings on Mylar, and hangs them freely from the gallery ceiling, along with mixed media works on the walls. So today, two artist-friends and I went to see her exhibition Synchronicity at Sidney and Gertrude Zack Gallery at the Jewish Community Centre, 950 West 41st Avenue in Vancouver, 604-257-5111. The exhibit’s last day is Wednesday, March 9, 2005.

This partial quote from the exhibition statement:

These experimental works are based on photographs taken during Ballet BC and Kokoro Dance rehearsals. Granirer’s mixed media paintings are textured, earthy works, which capture the movement of the dancers. Her startling life size drawings on clear Mylar are quite the opposite. They are installed in an innovative and engaging manner. Instead of hanging in a frame from the wall, the drawings are suspended from the ceiling, hovering, shimmering and moving in space; the lines defining the figures float with no visible support, within the open space of the gallery. The simplicity of the drawings and the fragility of the material allow the figures to move with the air currents as if they were alive. The dancing figures float in space unencumbered and free.

In this exhibition Granirer explores a new realm, taking art to the next level. The concept of live dancers interacting with static images, developed during an exhibition she had at the Yukon Arts Centre. There she collaborated with dancer/choreographer Gail Lotenberg who created a 15 minute dance sequence entering and exiting Granirer’s life-size drawings. “The dancer becomes one with the art.” Granirer says, “When the dancer entered the Mylars, there was a gasp from the audience. It was so dramatic and so unexpected.” It is really exciting to experience the interaction between a live body and an imaginary one, drawn by the artist. The visual works are a contained world by themselves. The addition of the dance transforms them into a new and different experience.

Some of her wall pieces incorporate a layer of painted or drawn clear acetate. There are several plexiglas boxed pieces containing flat and curved plexiglas each with her gestural textured paintings and drawings in layers. It excites me to see how she utilizes layering in so many ways, something that I have been working with. We were sorry we missed the dance performances but a video shows some of the dances, along with interviews of the artist and critics.

Please browse through Pnina Granirer’s extensive website. She has had a long and successful career as an artist.

So how apt and inspiring is this exhibition title “Synchronicity” for me at this time?!