Laddie John Dill (born Long Beach, CA, 1943) is an American artist. Dill calls his work "light sentences". [1] Dill received a BFA degree from Chouinard Art Institute, Los Angeles, in 1968. [2] He is the older brother of sculptor Guy Dill. [3]
Dill was educated at the Chouinard Art Institute in California, where he graduated with a BFA degree [4] with honors in 1968. [5] After he graduated, he worked as a printing apprentice to Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein and Claes Oldenberg. [4]
Dill is associated with the California " Light and Space Movement". [6] His work has been widely exhibited in museums and galleries, including those in New York, Paris, Seoul and other locations nationally and internationally. [5] His first solo exhibition took place in 1971 at the Sonnabend Gallery. [4] Dill is known for his glass, sand and light slab paintings from the 1960s and 1970s. [7] He also produced, starting in the 1970s, works with luminescent tubes charged with neon, mercury and argon gasses. [4] He has described these works as "light sentences," referring to language, and as "light plains". [8] [6]
Dill has received two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Guggenheim fellowship, [5] and a grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. [9]
Dill's work is held in the permanent collections of the Laguna Art Museum, [5] the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, [10] MOCA Los Angeles, [11] the Smithsonian American Art Museum, [12] among others.