Laddie John Dill was born in Long Beach, California in the year 1943. Much of his fascination with lights came from his father being a lens craftsman. He recalls how he would see lasers going around his house and how pretty they were. He knew at the time that he wanted to be an artist, but wasn’t fully aware of the opportunity to incorporate light into his art, until he was older.
He graduated from Chouinard Art Institute in 1968, 2 years before the college closed down, and he received his Bachelors in the Fine Arts. After graduating, he worked as a printing apprentice and worked under notable figures, such as Jasper Johns and Claes Oldenburg. In 1971, he went on to perform his first solo exhibition in New York in 1971. He notes that his first showings and his last showings will be the most important pieces to him, as they signal the start and end to a journey.
Many of his art pieces are made from glass tubes that he creates himself. He fills them with different mixtures of neon, argon, helium, and other noble gasses to get the desired color. This means that every single light fixture and tube was hand-crafted and filled with precisely the needed element to obtain the correct color concentration.
The images above represent a category that he describes as “Light Sentences.” When you look at it, you tend to view it from left to right or up to down, rather than viewing the entirety of the painting. In this aspect, it reminds you like you are reading a story. Dill wishes to incorporate a story into his work, through the use of different colors/tubing methods.
Many of his other works include the use of construction supplies, not typically found in most artworks. Materials, such as sand, concrete, and gravel were used by Dill to illustrate the rough beauty that lies within materials that we wouldn’t think could be used as artwork.
The images above represent what he describes as “Light Plains.” These plains have distinct differences of the tubes of gas being shown to the audience directly, or them being concealed with the environment. These rough and soft textures really compliment the overall usage of light, as you can see the texture very well. Likewise, the use of materials allows for breaks within the different tubes, almost creating a “Light paragraph” or a transcription using multiple “Light Sentences.”
Contained Radiance was made in 2014, uses both ‘Light Sentences” and “Light Plains” in the artwork.
Presentation Link: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1CeG2fbhQPVZ1C6XD7f6ey2bHYEpvlbdytbhEo7G1du0/edit?usp=sharing
Sources: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/549e029fe4b037c1970d6538/t/573640cc7da24fc27bb65e22/1463173325395/LJD_BoulevardQuarterly_2016.pdf https://static1.squarespace.com/static/549e029fe4b037c1970d6538/t/5736469a1bbee069b5deb640/1463174811390/LA+times_LJD_laser_sand_LagunaArtMuseum2015.pdf
http://www.laddiejohndill.com (Mainly used his website for images and pdf articles were posted to his website as well)