'Wilderness' honors Sojourner Truth, Emily Dickinson and others through textile sculptures

Larger than life figures of America’s literary and historical past will be on display beginning this fall at Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute.

Lesley Dill’s “Wilderness: Light Sizzles Around Me” brings a collection of hand-painted and sewn textile sculptures and banners to Utica’s art museum. Opening Oct. 20, the exhibition represents notable figures like abolitionist Sojourner Truth, author Nathaniel Hawthorne and Shaker founder Mother Ann Lee through cloth emblazoned with their words and experiences, suspended from the ceiling.

The inspiration for the New York City-based artist’s exhibition sprung from curiosity surrounding the situations of her favorite poets, especially Emily Dickinson.

“I felt that poetry existed in some spectacular geography of its own,” Dill said. “Like it was its own country. And I had never thought to find out, when did Emily Dickinson live? What was the context for her … intense writing about fear and joy and ecstasy and apprehension?”

As she learned more about Dickinson and others, it led Dill to explore more about the history of the modern-day United States and her own genealogy. She discovered ancestors who arrived in the early 17th century from England, which sparked an interest in Anne Hutchinson.

Reading about the earliest European arrivals highlighted to concept of wilderness and its different meanings for Dill.

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“What I learned from my reading is wilderness affected our early European American people from the outside, through fear and terror, and from the inside, through their deep, obsessive search for grace,” she said.

On the other hand, Native Americans were at home in the wilderness and found it to be a refuge, Dill said.

“So, I felt that the word wilderness can be interpreted in a number of different ways,” she said.

The exhibit stretches through history from the early colonial days to the 20th century, including interpretations of individuals like Black Hawk of the Sauk tribe, abolitionist John Brown and World War I veteran and painter Horace Pippin. One fictional character, Hester Prynne, from Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter” is included as well.

Dred Scott and Black Hawk are depicted on banners, while the rest are figures in period-appropriate clothing. Words, either from them or about them, surround and cover each figure.

“All I did for seven years was read, read, read,” Dill said. “What I read about them I tried to distill and I put upon their clothing.”

The words are stenciled in acrylic paint or embroidered to the cloth. Other media, such as horse hair, is used as well.

Dill uses the words for more than simply educational purposes.

“She, I think, uses text almost as a drawing implement, along with the line of the thread that she uses,” said Mary Murray, curator of modern and contemporary art at Munson-Williams.

Many of the figures are accompanied by a miniaturized version as a puppet or doll effigy, Murray said. Information accompanying them on the wall is also used to effect, such as a motif of a long and winding river in the Scott’s display to represent the path in the country’s legal system, eventually ending in the Supreme Court.

The exhibition space at Munson-Williams will be used to bring visitors into proximity with these larger-than-life figures.

“The main thing that we want to respect is that the figures present an opportunity for our visitors to have an encounter,” Murray said. “So it’s important that the material is installed in a way that allows it to be very accessible and people can move around it.”

Dill, who spent summers at her grandmother’s house near Tupper Lake, said she’s happy the exhibition is coming to Utica.

“I would say this exhibit is about reading and it’s about time in many different forms,” she said. “Historical time, my own private time in reading, my own private time with my teams of interns in making the work.”

The exhibition is organized by the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa and Munson-Williams is the fifth stop on the tour. The exhibition kickoff on Oct. 20 will include Dill speaking at 4 p.m. about her work as part of the Easton Pribble Lecture Series and a reception at 5 p.m.

This article originally appeared on Observer-Dispatch: Lesley Dill's Wilderness exhibit: Historic figures sculpted in cloth