Join Lesley Dill as she discusses her exhibition, “Lesley Dill, Wilderness: Light Sizzles Around Me,” at 6 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 16 in the Beren Gallery of the Ulrich Museum of Art. A reception begins at 5:30 p.m.
The exhibition represents an ongoing investigation into the voices and personas of the American past. For Dill, the voices grew from early America’s obsessions with divinity and deviltry, and on fears of the wilderness “out there” and inside everyone. The extremes of both shaped history and gave pulse and heat to the words of activists such as John Brown, Sojourner Truth, Anne Hutchinson and Dred Scott. Dill writes: “These personas and their times stir something deep in my own family history and sense of self. I am compelled to explore this period in America’s history when limited access to diversity of written word ignited the bravery of these figures in response to their times.”