The Arthur Roger Gallery is pleased to share a video of artist Lesley Dill discussing her exhibition Wild Grace – This Private Hallucinatory Moment, now on view at the Gallery through January 13, 2026.

Recorded during Dill’s artist talk at the gallery, the video offers a firsthand look into the ideas, materials, and research behind this recent body of work. Dill speaks candidly about her daily practice of reading poetry, most often Emily Dickinson, and how fragments of language become both structure and subject in her hand-cut copper figures and wall works. Words are not merely inscribed onto the surface; they function as carriers of energy, memory, and meaning.

Much of the work in Wild Grace – This Private Hallucinatory Moment was developed during and following Dill’s 2023–2024 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, where she studied outsider artists and late–19th-century scientific discovery. In the talk, she reflects on how early experiments with electricity, magnetism, and X-rays informed both the imagery and process of the work. Copper is chemically altered using materials such as salt and liver of sulfur, producing shifting patinas that echo the instability and wonder of early scientific exploration.

At the center of the exhibition is a monumental wall installation created specifically for the Arthur Roger Gallery. Measuring 13 by 26 feet, the work presents a constellation of figures—what Dill calls her “Electric Ladies”—rising from a central typewriter and charged with language and light. The figures reference Indigenous healers, outsider artists, and imagined scientists, creating a space where poetry, belief, and discovery intersect.

The artist talk video provides valuable insight into Dill’s thinking and working process and serves as an excellent entry point into the exhibition as a whole.