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art treatise
STANDING in front of a Dorothy Gillespie piece brings to mind a wide
off the wall
A centennial celebration for renowned artist Dorothy Gillespie
June 29, 1920 - September 30, 2012 brings vibrant enamel-painted
totems, panels, starbursts and sculptures to Wilmington.
By Emory Rakestraw
variety of experiences, such as pulling the blade of a pair of scissors
against a ribbon to create a loop, which magically seems to form the
tendrils of a perfect bow. Or of rain parading down a steep brick wall,
watching the droplets become characters of their own as they fall in a
calculated motion.
These images are very different, and Gillespie wanted those who view her art to
have those unique experiences as they spend time with her pieces.
“She never named her work specifically, she would call it something like Festival Two
and Festival Three,” says her dear friend Tony Rivenbark. “She wanted it to speak to the
person. If it looked like a quilt, if it looked like a field of flowers, that’s what it was.”
A native of Roanoke, Virginia, Gillespie earned a degree at the Maryland Institute
College of Art before moving to New York City in 1943. She began to dabble in
abstraction in the 1950s and ‘60s, later discovering her trademark medium — enam-el-
painted metal.
“Seeing in the
mind’s eye a
vision — then
setting up a
procedure to
produce the
vision — then
having the
courage to let
the spiritual
core of the
human experi-ence
come to
the fore in that
vision; maybe
this has some-thing
to do with
creativity.”
—DOROTHY GILLESPIE
Dorothy Gillespie’s totems, starbursts and wall hangings brighten Rockefeller Center in 2003.
www.wrightsvillebeachmagazine.com WBM