The Poetic Body: Poem Eyes
Artist
Lesley Dill
(American, born 1950)
Date1992
MediumLithograph, letterpress and collage on paper
DimensionsOverall: 18 x 13in. (45.7 x 33cm)
ClassificationsPRINTS
Credit LineMuseum Purchase
Object number93.13.1
DescriptionLithograph, letterpress and collage on Richard de Bas paper; One of 4 pieces from series titled 'The Poetic Body'. Uses text from an Emily Dickinson poem and a Hindi newspaper printed on oriental papers. The sections of text are cut and collaged onto the backing sheet of paper. The Dickinson text appears as the track of tears falling from the cut out eyes. The Hindi text is the backing for these eye holes. Hanging from the end of the tear tracks are 2 eye shapes cut from Rives BFK paper, buff, each stamped with a true fingerprint in black ink.On View
Not on viewCollections
Copyright© Lesley Dill
Label TextLesley Dill’s work focuses on the body as a vessel for our spiritual selves. She found within Emily Dickinson’s poetry honest references to emotion and vulnerability that are compatible to her own interests. In this series, Dill inscribes a Dickinson poem onto a corresponding body part she created with delicate materials such as paper and copper foil. Dill’s goal is to resemble physical weightlessness and, simultaneously, to shield the figures from the harsh world that humans are exposed to and continue to create.
Charlotte Zee
Hamilton College Intern, summer 2016
Lesley Dill's four-print Poetic Body combines elements of Emily Dickinson's poetry with an appropriate part of the body. In Poem Eyes, for example, the text reads: "much madness is divinest sense to a discerning eye" and "much sense the starkest madness."
Dill has written, "I think of words, and especially the poems of Emily Dickinson (for their embodiment of psychological states of despair and euphoria as metaphors for being), as a kind of spiritual armor, an intervening skin between ourselves and the world. How nice to slip inside words, the meaning and shape of some emotion you're feeling, and go out into life."
MEM
2002
