In Conversation: Lesley Dill and Joan Hall
Exploring Practices and Media
Wednesday, August 14, 2024
1—2 PM
WATCH NOW:
Video recording of the Zoom conversation with Lesley Dill and Joan Hall from August 14, 2024.
Note: closed captions are auto-generated. Please excuse typos and misspellings
New York City-based artist Lesley Dill and Jamestown artist Joan Hall will delve into their artistic practices and discuss how shifts in media have influenced their work and led to their inclusion in the PIVOT exhibition, currently on view at the Jamestown Arts Center through September 7.
The conversation is moderated by Jody Saarmaa. All three serve on the board of Dieu Donné, a leading non-profit cultural institution dedicated to supporting established and emerging artists through the collaborative creation of art with handmade papermaking.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Lesley Dill credits her father, who heard voices and used a private, metaphorical language, for her early exposure to the nuances of language and its various degrees of intelligibility. She credits a book of Emily Dickinson’s poetry, a 40th-birthday gift from her mother, for dramatically changing the direction of her art. Dill’s early work centered on attenuated figures sculpted of wood, bronze, or Celluclay. Though these figures dealt with themes of vulnerability and sensuality, they were relatively literal in concept. The incorporation of language, specifically poetry, provided new layers of meaning in her art.
Such works argue that our sense of self is formed in large part through language and communication. Dill’s art has been further influenced by her travels in India and her interest in Buddhism. The artist has been the focus of two retrospective exhibitions, which traveled widely. Her awards include a sculpture fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a grant from the Joan Mitchell Foundation. She is currently the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow (2023-2024).
Joan Hall works in mixed media and large-scale sculptural installations with an emphasis on the materials of handmade paper, glass and metal. Hall received her BFA at the Columbus College of Art and Design in Ohio and her MFA at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She studied papermaking with Garner Tullis at the Institute of Experimental Printmaking in Santa Cruz, California.
Hall is known for her innovative approaches to material and process. The climate crisis, with an emphasis on plastic pollution, her passion for marine advocacy and experimentation with materials is core to her practice. She has always been drawn to the sea, its maritime history, a love of sailing and her physical relationship to it as a source of inspiration throughout her career. Hall’s work has been exhibited in numerous solo and group shows in the US and abroad, including Germany, Denmark and Japan, the Netherlands and France. Her installation: The Invasion of Hull Cove, was included in the European Cultural Center’s Personal Structures exhibition during the 2019 Venice Biennale. Her most recent large scale installation Algae Bloom was at the Waterfire Arts Center’s exhibition Planet Earth: The Environment and Our Future, in Providence, RI.
She has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards that include two MAAA-NEA individual artist grants and an exhibition grant for her show in Silkeborg from the Danish National Arts Council.
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION: PIVOT at the JAC is a celebration of artistic risk-taking and innovation. The exhibition provides an intimate glimpse at the creative process of 21 artists. Curated by Karen Conway and Jeff Foye, PIVOT represents a departure from traditional curatorial methods, inviting established artists to take bold risks and explore new artistic realms.