Laddie John Dill

Laddie John Dill was born in Long Beach in 1943. He graduated with honors from Chouinard Art Institute in 1968. At the age of 28, he was offered his first one-man exhibit at the Sonnabend Gallery in New York. Today he enjoys a huge national and international reputation. His list of exhibitions is pages long, including venues from Seoul, Paris, Nogoya, and Helsinki 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. Dill is a recipient of two National Endowment grants, one for sculpture and one for painting. He has also received a Guggenheim Fellowship. He has taught and lectured at UCLA, UC Irvine, Art Center in Pasadena, Otis Art Institute, and numerous universities and art institutions across the United States.

Dill made his celebrated glass and argon-gas Light Sentences in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Installed in a dim room, either vertically or horizontally, they appear as streaks in space, with different colors emitting brighter or dimmer light. Dill’s later work incorporates architectural and landscape imagery, using cement polymer, glass, silicone, and pigment. He has also produced wall sculptures and environmentally scaled work in metal and glass.