Laddie John Dill, a Los Angeles native, was born in
Long Beach and attended Santa Monica High School. He grad-uated
from Chouinard Art Institute in 1968. By the time Dill
was 28, he was offered his first one-man exhibit at the
Sonnabend Gallery in New York. Dill's talent and ingenuity
have combined to make him a highly regarded national and
internationally known contemporary artist. Dill's list
of exhibitions is pages long, with galleries and museums
listed from such venues as Seoul, Paris, and Helsinki,
Finland to New York, Kansas City, Seattle, and throughout
Northern and Southern California. His work is owned by
many private collectors and is included in the permanent
collections of more than 25 museums. Even he admits to
not knowing exactly how many exhibitions he has done since
his first one-man show.
In 1968, while Dill was still in school, he and Chuck
Arnoldi formed a small framing business, "Acme Framing
Company", and the artists engaged in many serious
discussions concerning what they considered to be the
death of painting. After graduation from Chouinard, Dill
said, "I needed a job but I wanted to work where
I could further my education as well." As an apprentice
printer at Gemini, located in West Hollywood, Dill had
the opportunity to work closely with such established
artists as Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Claus Oldenberg
and Roy Lichtenstein. Dialog between artists of the 1970s
resulted in experiments with materials previously not
considered traditional art media, such as neon, sticks,
wax, cement and the relationship of those materials to
each other. "It was a good healthy time for experimentation",
Dill began experimenting first with neon and argon tubing.
Dill moved on to working three-dimensionally and filled
a room in his studio with 10,000 pounds of silica sand.
It was there that he mixed light and sand to create pieces
which were more like painting than sculpture. "It
was very much like doing a painting, except that it was
on the floor, and I used shovels and brooms instead of
a brush."
During the 1970's Dill also began experimenting with wall
pieces using cement in contrast with the smooth surface
of glass. Using natural pigments he incorporates, in his
work, a wide range of colors from brick reds derived,
from iron oxide, coal blacks from black sulphur, yellows
and naturally mined cobalt blues. Combinations of these
natural pigments create a variety of brilliant but still
"organic" colors.
Dill’s most recent work, Light Trap, involves the
manipulation of light through paintings made of welded
and polished aircraft aluminum. |
