By Chelsea Brasted via The Times-Picayune

Taming and culling artistic inspiration can often be a difficult task, but multimedia artist Lesley Dill uses a calm, organic approach toward her work.

“I think of (ideas) as almost like frogs — jump-up solutions,” explains Dill from her New York studio. “You’re thinking about what to do next, then up from inside your stomach jumps an idea or a material or a medium.”

A collection of the results from those ideas will be on exhibition in Baton Rouge from Sept. 6 through Jan. 19 at the LSU Museum of Art. The exhibit, titled “I Gave My Whole Life to Words,” honors Dill’s lifelong love of the written word and her tactile physical representations of her own interpretations.

Dill has always held a fascination with words, having grown up with a love of literature which led to her studying English at Trinity College.

“The core of my work is language and my belief in the power of words, and that is what has freed me to use different materials,” Dill said, who works in a variety of materials.

The Museum of Art exhibition reflects this variance, offering pieces in thread, horsehair, paper, cloth and other materials.

“Some artists are chainsaw artists, glass blowers, sculptors … but I think of myself as a fingertip artist,” Dill said. “I love the different touch of materials. That one piece of horsehair tied to the other piece of thread. Even in talking to you, I’m holding my hands as if I’m feeling those teeny fibers I’m talking about.”

Part of the exhibition features the Extasie series, which premiered at the Miami Biennale in 2012 and she describes it the collection as a “family” of characters.

“The words are painted on these mannequins, which I was interested in using that kind of eccentric form to make them carry language,” Dill said. “That’s what we do as human beings. We emit language, but we also carry language as if it’s just written underneath out skin. … We are completely animals of language.”

“Lesley Dill: I Gave My Whole Life to Words” is on loan from the Arthur Roger Gallery in New Orleans and is made possible in part by Country Roads Magazine. Dill will be in Baton Rouge at the LSU School of Art on Oct. 9 to present a lecture, titled “We Are Animals of Language,” at 5 p.m.