publications
Featuring essays by Alejandro Malo, the Mexico City-based photography critic; and Dr. Mary Ann Wilson, Distinguished Professor of English and Women’s Studies at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Interview with artist Lynda Frese and exhibition curator Laura Blereau.
Published on the occasion of a solo exhibition at the Hilliard University Art Museum, this catalogue presents the work of visual artist Lynda Frese. It highlights a selection of early gelatin silver photograms and experiments made in California, while tracing a steady trajectory, from 1978 to 2018, of her continued interest in human and natural forms.
"As a photographer Frese draws with light, but as a painter she also reveals a deep sensitivity to color and material that is specific to place. Some of the compositions radiate an earthy glow. She is a keen observer of the natural world and its energies, yet her figures operate in a symbolically rich plane of the imagination. . . . Frese’s pictures are essentially landscapes, and the human lives represented in them are part of a larger system of nature. Her work is a witness to countless mythologies, and also tells a story of personal discovery. It seeks spaces of emotional and spiritual power while featuring a myriad of figures – from family members to pop-stars, insects, and icons from antiquity."
— Laura Blereau, Curator and Coordinator of Academic Programming, Newcomb Art Museum, Tulane University
Lynda Frese: Holy Memories & Earthly Delights
UL Press, Lafayette, LA
Softcover, 2018. 72 pp.
The images in Lynda Frese's Pacha Mama: earth realm imagine a set of religious iconography using ideas borrowed from the Italian Renaissance and indigenous cultures of Central and South America. In this collection, saints and nature spirits are fused together in hybrid landscapes. Pachamama is the earth mother, goddess of fertility and protector of the natural world. Themes of redemption and enchantment, death and renewal are echoed in the texts, poems and Sanskrit prayers.
Frese’s photographic images come from ancient sites ranging from pre-historic Europe, the jungles and lands of the Mayans, to Louisiana’s Gulf of Mexico, where she lives. Transparent layers of egg tempera paint, made with antique pigments, and egg yolks from the environments where she is working, are painted over the collage images.
With text contributions by Louisiana’s poet laureate Darrell Bourque, yogi SwanMichele Baker, dancer/filmaker Kathi von Koerber; introduction by artist Lynda Frese.
Pacha Mama: earth realm
Photographic collages by Lynda Frese
2011. 64 pp., images, texts, poems and prayers
An engaging survey of contemporary collage work from 40 of the leading international artists working today. It features a mix of techniques from traditional cut-and-paste to digital to collage with paint or encaustic, and styles ranging from wildly playful and colorful to evocative, almost monochrome images. Each highlighted master takes center stage in an informative eight-page feature that includes nearly a dozen gorgeous, high-quality photos plus a short essay by curator Randel Plowman placing the impressive work and its creator in context.
Featuring Frese's Hindu Deities Along the Gulf Coast series (2005-2007)
"After hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, Frese photographed the wreckage in the small towns of Mississippi and Louisiana, and the city of New Orleans. Images of destruction filled the tables in her studio; the pictures functioned as raw data-- an inventory of loss and the power of nature. She used the images to create a moving series of layered photographic collages that serve as meditations on grief, remembrance and spirituality."
Masters: Collage: Major Works by Leading Artists
Terry Taylor, ed. Lark Books, Ashville, NC
2010
Aspects of the Divine, from the Goddess to the Madonna.
“Lynda Frese has an instinct for accumulating visual data. Over the years she has amassed a vast anthology of images from which she assemble her collages. Bodies, buildings, objets trouvés , old photographs and ex-votos are placed in evocative, ambiguous contexts as if by a magical process the ordered system of the muniment room has been disturbed by some unseen force. And like in a dream it seems one can never quite penetrate the labyrinth tantalizingly opened up to the spectator.” Alison Smith, Senior Programme Curator,Tate Britain
"Perhaps it will be surprising, but I believe that the work of Lynda Frese is characterized by a supernatural aspect so intense and considerable as to place it fully within the realm of sacred art. Understood in its truest and traditional meaning, the sacred is that which is hidden and inviolable and, therfore, does not pertain to the material world. This is why one cannot comprehend the significance of this work without entering into a different dimension, one that obligates us to follow paths that are not immediately obvious. We need to employ a particular methodology that is based on the knowledge and value of symbols... The adrogyne and the alchemical rebus, or riddle, are reflected in the many works of Lynda Frese. " Dr. Remo Palmirani, Museo Ex Libris
Lynda Frese: Immagini Pagane/Pagan Imaging, Catalog. Smith, Alison. (Curator, Tate Britain), Palmirani, Remo, (Museo Ex Libris) , texts in English and Italian. Progetti Farnesiani, Italy
2000