Second Local Exhibition by Mcllroy Visiting Professor Opens

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Faith and the Devil at George Adams Gallery in New York City

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Faith and the Devil by Lesley Dill opens Monday, March 3, in the Fine Arts Center Gallery. The installation will close Friday, April 4. Dill is a sculptor, photographer and performer who is serving as the university’s 2014 Mcllroy Family Visiting Professor in the Visual and Performing Arts.

Faith and the Devil is a large-scale installation, which investigates the philosophical and existential conundrums of evil and underlying faith in the world. At the center of the exhibition is Big Gal Faith, an eight-foot tall female figure with long hair and a twenty-six-foot wide dress. She is covered in drawn images and words that express the main themes of the exhibit: cruelty, violence, lust, forgiveness, reflection and transcendence. 

Dill has worked with these themes in other exhibitions and large-scale projects, including Tongues on Fire: Visions and Ecstasy, Interviews with the Contemplative Mind, Hell Hell Hell/ Heaven Heaven Heaven: Encountering Sister Gertrude Morgan and Revelation and Divide Light.  She uses a variety of media and techniques to explore these ideas as well as language, the body and transformational experience.

A reception for Dill will be held at 5 p.m. Tuesday March 4, in the Fine Arts Center Gallery. Following the reception, she will present a lecture at 6 p.m. in the Stella Boyle Smith Concert Hall.

Dill may also be seen at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, March 6, during reception at the Walton Arts Center to celebrate Divide Light: The Operatic Performance Costumes of Lesley Dill, which has been on display in the Joy Pratt Markham Gallery since Feb. 6.

Dill is a graduate of Trinity College. She also earned a master of arts in teaching from Smith College and a master of fine arts from the Maryland Institute of Art. She has received a Joan Mitchell grant, a Rockefeller Multi-Arts Program grant and an Anonymous Was a Woman award.

The exhibitions, receptions and lecture are free and open to the public. More information is available at the Fine Arts Center Gallery website as well as in the Fulbright Review.