2004

In 2004 Lesley Dill went to New Orleans for a five day long community project with the students of NOCCA. NOCCA is the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, a flagship pre-professional arts training facility for local New Orleans students. The students worked with Lesley Dill, and Mary Jane Parker, from NOCCA, to create a wall installation about the head as well as the bodily senses .The result was a 20 foot long wall installation using photo litho and silk screening print making processes on shades of blue and white cotton muslin and silk organza, titled "Blue". The prints are layered with images and text - using all the colors of blue to ocean, sky, river, turquoise, gray-blue, navy blue, aqua marine, royal blue etc.

Thoughts on Blue project, the head and the senses

Our heads are filigreed by our senses of smell, hearing, speech, taste, sight and skin.  Our head more than any other part of our body is about threshold.  You hear , but how much do you hear.  How much do you or can you let in.  You see, - - are your eyes like fishing lines reaching out, or soft and letting in.  Our head is the guardian and the defier of sensorial information.  The head was for the Romans and European medievalists the organ that contained the soul , and exerted the most direct function on the body.  The importance of the head in hierarchy over the ever lower parts of the body can be seen in reverse life - - decapitation and head hunting, wanting to destroy or possess the power of the person.

Our heads also radiate out an intense search.  We are looking, we are hunting for something. And we have a desire to communicate-  we want to tell the story, our story, to someone.
Speak.