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Past Exhibitions

Browse the chronological list of past exhibitions at the Saint Louis University Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCRA), or search for a specific exhibition. Click “View” for more information about an exhibition. If you need further information about an exhibition, please contact us.

Lesley Dill: Dream World of the Forest

Lesley Dill: Dream World of the Forest

August 24, 2022 to October 16, 2022

MOCRA is pleased to present three new collage-paintings by Lesley Dill, an American artist who works at the intersection of language and fine art in sculpture, printmaking, installation and performance, exploring the power of words to cloak and reveal the psyche. Dill transforms the emotions of the writings of Emily Dickinson, Salvador Espriu, Tom Sleigh, Franz Kafka, and Rainer Maria Rilke, among others, into works of paper, wire, horsehair, foil, bronze and music—works that awaken the viewer to the physical intimacy and power of language itself.

The three works on display are composed of Asian mulberry paper, joined as squares using a glue fusion technique. The imagery and text are made from a combination of acrylic paint and intricately hand-cut paper imagery, subtly webbed by Dill’s trademark addition of delicate hanging threads. Dill dissolves and recombines texts, breaking phrases into words and words into letters set in variegated fonts. The disrupted syntax challenges our accustomed linearity of reading and thinking, and opens up new possibilities of meaning and understanding

Dream World of the Forest is a follow-up to Dill’s series Wilderness: Light Sizzles Around Me, which amplifies voices of the North American past as they wrestle with divinity, deviltry, and freedom, including Mother Ann Lee, Black Hawk, Sojourner Truth, John Brown, Emily Dickinson, Horace Pippin and Sister Gertrude Morgan.

Dill is also fascinated by the wilderness as a simultaneously physical and psychic landscape. She spent much of her childhood following pathways in the shadowed Adirondack and Maine woods, on trails cut by deer, bear, rabbits and porcupine. These memories and her ongoing exploration of transcendent experiences are joined in these new works, which beckon us into untamed territory inhabited by prophetic and poetic texts and visionary imagery. Venturing onto these unmarked paths entails risk, but may lead to insight, wisdom, and transformation.

Lesley Dill: Dream World of the Forest is presented at MOCRA courtesy of Lesley Dill and the .


Lesley Dill (b. 1950) has had over one hundred solo exhibitions. Her artworks are in the collections of many major museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art New York, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. In 2017 she was named a fellow of The John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and is a Joan Mitchell Foundation Creating A Living Legacy artist and grant recipient. Her opera, Divide Light, based on the poems of Emily Dickinson, was performed in San Jose in 2008. In 2018 the opera was re-staged in New York City and captured in an award-winning film by Ed Robbins. Dill was the recipient of the Emily Dickinson Museum’s 2019 ‘Tell it Slant’ Award. Dill’s exhibition Wilderness: Light Sizzles Around Me, organized by the Figge Art Museum, is currently traveling to 7 venues through Winter of 2023.

Dill is represented by Nohra Haime Gallery in New York and Arthur Roger Gallery in New Orleans. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.


above:
Lesley Dill, When the Deer Talk to Me, 2022. Hand-cut paper, acrylic paint, and thread on mulberry paper. Courtesy of Lesley Dill and the Nohra Haime Gallery.


Related programming

Artist, Poet, Curator: A Conversation with Lesley Dill, Tom Sleigh and Rene Paul Barilleaux


Watch Artist, Poet, Curator: A Conversation with Lesley Dill, Tom Sleigh and Rene Paul Barilleaux

Exhibition
Bernard Maisner: The Hourglass and the Spiral

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Georges Rouault: Miserere et Guerre

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Calligraphic Art of Salma Arastu

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Andy Warhol: Silver Clouds

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September 2, 2003 to October 12, 2003

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Tony Hooker: The Greater Good – An Artist

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Lewis deSoto: Paranirvana

Lewis deSoto: Paranirvana
April 15, 2000 to November 05, 2000

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Robert Farber: A Retrospective, 1985–1995

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Bernard Maisner: Entrance to the Scriptorium

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Tobi Kahn: Metamorphoses

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March 8, 1998 to May 8, 1998

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Edward Boccia: Eye of the Painter

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Consecrations Revisited

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Keith Haring: Altarpiece – The Life of Christ

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Eleanor Dickinson: A Retrospective

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Consecrations: The Spiritual in Art in the Time of AIDS

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Beyond Words: Three Contemporary Artists and the Manuscript Tradition

Beyond Words: Three Contemporary Artists and the Manuscript Tradition
May 24, 2018 to November 12, 2018

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MOCRA: 25

MOCRA: 25
September 16, 2018 to March 3, 2019

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Gratitude
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Terrence Dempsey, S.J., Founding Director of MOCRA, retired from Saint Louis University on June 30, 2019, after nearly thirty years as a professor of Art History. With the exhibition Gratitude, he desires to express a deeply felt “thank you” — for the opportunity to establish a museu...
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For his first show curated as Director of MOCRA, David Brinker delves into the MOCRA collection, bringing out works that haven’t been shown in a number of years and juxtaposing them with perennial favorites. The works from the collection are joined by several works on loan. Meanwhile, the remov...
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People everywhere were captivated as Amanda Gorman delivered her poem The Hill We Climb on the steps of the Capitol on Inauguration Day. Her cascading cadences of imagery alluded to orators of the past but unequivocally asserted her own voice in addressing the present moment. A short phrase from...
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Tom Kiefer: Pertenencias / Belongings
September 03, 2021 to December 19, 2021

In July 2003, fine art photographer Tom Kiefer started working part-time as a janitor and groundskeeper at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection processing facility near Ajo, Arizona. In mid-2007, he was given permission to collect food confiscated from migrants and asylum seekers and donate it to...
Double Vision: Art from Jesuit University Collections

Double Vision: Art from Jesuit University Collections
February 16, 2022 to May 22, 2022

Three museums and seven centuries of art Double Vision: Art from Jesuit University Collections speaks to the unique role of art in Jesuit teaching as an instrument for finding meaning in life through imagination, feelings and reflection. The exhibition features 28 works ...
Lesley Dill: Dream World of the Forest

Lesley Dill: Dream World of the Forest
August 24, 2022 to October 16, 2022

MOCRA is pleased to present three new collage-paintings by Lesley Dill, an American artist who works at the intersection of language and fine art in sculpture, printmaking, installation and performance, exploring the power of words to cloak and reveal the psyche. Dill transforms the emotions of t...
Jordan Eagles: VIRAL\VALUE

Jordan Eagles: VIRAL\VALUE
October 26, 2022 to December 18, 2022

Medium and Message Jordan Eagles is the master of a most unlikely medium: blood. His signature preservation technique permanently retains the organic material’s natural colors, patterns, and textures. In recent years, he has produced works made with donated human bloo...
This Road Is the Heart Opening: Selections from the MOCRA Collection

This Road Is the Heart Opening: Selections from the MOCRA Collection
August 24, 2022 to December 18, 2022

The COVID-19 pandemic has illuminated harmful systemic inequities and our responsibility to name and respond to them. Simultaneously, we are recognizing the importance of attending to our own well-being in mind, body, and spirit, a holistic vision of human wellness that Ignatian spirituality refe...
Vicente Telles and Brandon Maldonado: Cuentos Nuevomexicanos

Vicente Telles and Brandon Maldonado: Cuentos Nuevomexicanos
March 19, 2023 to June 25, 2023

Engaging a Living Tradition Artists Vicente Telles and Brandon Maldonado are forging new links in the chain of the continuing story of the people of New Mexico. Telles is firmly rooted in the Santero tradition (the making of santos, or images of saints), w...
Open Hands: Crafting the Spiritual

Open Hands: Crafting the Spiritual
January 28, 2024 to May 19, 2024

Open Hands: Crafting the Spiritual assembles the work of six intergenerational artists from across the country who use everyday materials, found objects, and elements of craft production to explore issues related to faith and spirituality, personal and cultural identity, and tradition and ...
Selections from the MOCRA Collection

Selections from the MOCRA Collection
September 06, 2023 to December 17, 2023

Enjoy a look at some of the most popular works in the MOCRA collection, along with recent acquisitions and lesser known gems. In particular, we pay tribute to the late James Rosen (1933–2023). In a career spanning more than six decades, Rosen demonstrated a keen under...