NEWS & EVENTS

First Presbyterian Features Works of Laddie John Dill
Painter/sculptor Laddie John Dill was born in Long Beach, California in 1943. He graduated from Chouinard Art Institute, Los Angeles, in 1968 with a BFA degree.

After graduation from Chouinard, Dill worked as a printing apprentice with Pop artists Robert Rauschenberg, Claus Oldenberg, Roy Lichtenstein and Jasper Johns (with whom he lived in the 1970s).

Dill was influenced by Rauschenberg, Keith Sonnier, and environmental artists Robert Smithson, Dennis Oppenheim and Robert Irwin, who were exploring alternatives to easel painting.

In 1968, Dill created installations composed of glass, neon and sand, which appeared to be aerial views of landscape in a horizontal format. In 1971, Dill had his first one-man exhibit at the Sonnabend Gallery in New York.

Through experimentation his work took on a fresh format bounded by straight lines with the addition of architectonic shapes. In 1975, the format was vertical, suggesting "a figurative reference achieved by a more formal architectural structuring." Two years later he was working on a vertical "Door" series.

Later paintings fused both landscape and architectural imagery. Dill was working with cement polymer, glass, silicone and oil on canvas. He has also made drawings in pastel, oil and graphite on rag paper. In addition to carving cement, Dill filled a room in his studio with 10,000 pounds of silica sand, using brooms and shovels to move it around in the creation of his version of an art work.

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Exhibit of Tiffany Windows
In 1922 First Presbyterian Church commissioned the Tiffany Studios in New York to create seven windows for their Seventh and Arizona building. When the church built its current facility on Second Street, the center panels of the windows were placed into the façade. They are now being restored for display in and around the church buildings.

Overlooking the patio is the Immortality Window, depicting an Angel rising before the throne of God. Inside the lobby area are two windows, one called “Woodland Irises”, a landscape that was created to honor Mary R. Joslyn, a church member and gardener whose home was known as “Violet Cottage” because of the profusion of purple and violet blooms that surrounded it.

The second window is entitled “Crossing the Bar”, and honors the famous Tennyson poem.

Our other windows, “Immortality”, “Hospitality” “Blessed are the Peacemakers” and “Saint Cecelia” are currently being treated for conservation purposes by the Judson Studios. We will be bringing them back into the church as the work is completed.