In Pacha Mama: earth realm, Lynda Frese brings together 35 of her own artworks and essays, prayers, and poems by noted healers Michele Baker and Kathi von Koerber and poet Darrell Bourque to invite the reader to consider ways of living harmoniously with the earth. The images and text explore notions of death and rebirth by considering the ways that Nature teaches us, feeds us, cleanses us, and mends us throughout time. Frese’s artworks, her own photographs combined with vintage printed material and egg tempera paints, reflect upon the South American earth goddess Pachamama and an “end time” that leads to the redemption and regeneration of the planet.
“Lynda Frese’s
Pacha Mama: earth realm is an invitation to see and to experience the sacred as it manifests itself in the earth realm. This remarkable book is a work of a remarkable imagination: an imagination grounded in ancient verity but as permeable as the blue waters and the tropes of fluidity which are so prominent in both the art works and the language texts that make up the book. Frese posits the notion that the sacred is ever-present in both the natural and the human-touched world: it is there in a mallard’s nest, in oneiric scapes, in the visual rhymes created by the arches in a tree’s extensions or a bird’s open wing which are yoked to images of vaulted ceilings in antique churches and holy sites. The work, both individual and collective, suggests that much of what we can access of the sacred in the earth realm is about positioning, and mindfulness is all the rest. Pachamama: earth realm is a mediation on the holy, the wild, the eye, the soul, the imagination. The book is one to build a practice on.”
Darrell Bourque
Louisiana Poet Laureate, 2007-2008, 2009-2011
“Some say all roads lead to Rome, but in truth all roads lead back to the jungle.”
Kathi Von Koerber
Filmmaker, Dancer, Healer
“What makes the
Pacha Mama series so resonant is the way the media mirrors the imagery and content of the work… It’s one of the most compelling, engrossing, mind-expanding, soul-nourishing, awe-inspiring and beautiful bodies of work I’ve seen in recent memory. You’ll never look at a cave, a forest or the sea in the same way ever again.”
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Reggie Rodrigue, “Our Lady of Global Conscience: Lynda Frese at the Acadiana Center for the Arts” louisianaesthetic.com
“The art in
Pacha Mama: earth realm is lush, complex, and sinister, with traces of Goya and the Brothers Grimm … Frese’s art, liked her introduction, is much darker than your typical “earth mother” fare- it reminds one of the jungles in Werner Herzog’s films, full of fornication and decay, and, indeed, Frese begins her essay with an Herzog quote: ‘It is as if the modern human soul had awakened here.’ The themes of earth and harmony are still apparent, but are presented more as warnings than urgings, and it’s clear that, to Frese, at the core of natural harmony beats the earth’s dark heart.”
Nathan Martin, “Lynda Frese and the Earth’s Dark Heart” Room 220, NOLA Book and Literary News
The series Pacha Mama: earth realm will be presented in 2011 at Redbud Galley in Houston, Texas (May) and at the Acadiana Center for the Arts in Lafayette, Louisiana (November).
