March 3 - February 4, 2014

Faith & the Devil is a large-scale installation which investigates the philosophical and existential conundrums of evil and underlying faith in the world. The source and lynchpin for this investigation is Big Gal Faith, an eight-foot tall female figure centered in the gallery. Her wild word hair and lavish twenty-six foot wide dress of drawn images and words express the main themes of the exhibit: cruelty and violence, lust, forgiveness, reflection, and transcendence. Dill has worked with these themes across a decade of large-scale projects and exhibitions including a year-long community & museum project in Winston-Salem, N.C. called Tongues on Fire: Visions and Ecstasy, 2000-2001, followed by another year long project for a Boulder museum exhibition called Interviews with the Contemplative Mind. In 2008 she conceived, produced, and directed an opera based on the language of Emily Dickinson, Divide Light, preformed in San Jose, CA. Most recently in New Orleans, fall 2010, at Arthur Roger Gallery Dill created an installation based on the life of Sister Gertrude Morgan, a street preacher, artist, and poet who worked in New Orleans during the sixties and seventies, called Hell Hell Hell/ Heaven Heaven Heaven: Encountering Sister Gertrude Morgan & Revelation. Dill states, “My theme of faith should in no way be mistaken for a kind of earnestness or naïve surrender. I believe the soul is huge, hungry and ravenous, and faith contains as much fear as optimism and crazy grace. I am drawn to explore these things, the big story.”

Leslie Dill, Faith and The Devil.  Courtesy of George Adams Gallery, NYC