The Poetic Body: Poem Dress of Circulation
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 number93.13.4
DescriptionLithograph, letterpress and collage on Richard de Bas paper; This edition is 4 of 4 pieces from a series titled 'The Poetic Body'. This piece uses text from an Emily Dickinson poem printed by letterpress in green ink onto silk tissue. The poem appears on the face side of a dress with an image of a heart and veins drawn by the artist on lithograph plate. This plate was printed in a single run using blue ink. The dress was cut and assembled with a sheet of kozo paper supporting the skirt. The dress is attached to a backing sheet of Richard de Bas paper.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
