Molly Dilworth: All Night Forever presents research studies and works on the artist’s investigation of the American tendency to hybridize and formal patterns and designs embedded with symbolic meanings. Dilworth’s paintings attempt to erode the formal geometric qualities of a pattern into illegibility while simultaneously giving form to histories that have been silenced or unknown. At what point does a pattern become so unrecognizable from its initial source that it becomes its own? Furthermore, when does the context of the pattern no longer bear witness to its history? No longer a variation or derivative of the original, Dilworth’s patterns reconfigure histories into contemporary life and sensitively reveals the unpleasant parts of human behavior, often hidden in the recesses of the night. In counterpart, providing hope for a future without oppression (often operating “underground”), the will to fight for ethics and equality are also ever-present in the same darkness.
For the Smoky Hill River Festival, Dilworth painted the Oakdale Pond, once a segregated public swimming pool, with an inlaid outline of the Carver Pool, the once all black pool in Salina.The patterns were derived from traditional European sources (Pennsylvania Dutch barn decorations, English and Irish quilt patterns) and Afro-Caribbean sources (Central African baskets, Gee's Bend quilt patterns). The latter patterns were inset into the pond with the dimensions of the Carver Pool. This work will be visible to satellite engines such as Google Earth, marking a visual history of Salina from an aerial perspective. .