Draft:Lynda Frese

Lynda Frese (born 1956) is an American visual artist whose work explores human relationships with the natural world. Her art is informed by prehistoric sites, the Italian Renaissance, and the cultural history of the American South.

Early life and education
Lynda Frese (b. January 25, 1956, Jacksonville, Florida) She received a B.A. (1978) and M.F.A (1986) from the University of California at Davis. Her first major exhibition was the 1982 SECA (Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Arts) Photography Invitational at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, curated by Van Deren Coke. In 2016, she was named professor emeritus at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, where she taught in the Department of Visual Arts. Frese received fellowships from the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, the Rockefeller Bellagio Center and the Bogliasco Study Center for the Arts and Humanities in Italy. The 2018 exhibition “Lynda Frese: Holy Memories & Earthly Delights” at the Hilliard Art Museum surveyed 40 years of her work.

Lynda Frese: Holy Memories & Earthly Delights
Frese’s 2018 exhibition Lynda Frese: Holy Memories & Earthly Delights at the Hilliard Art Museum surveyed 40 years of her work, from early toned gelatin silver prints produced in California to recent photo-collage and egg tempera works. A monograph with critical essays was published by University of Louisiana Press. The catalogue "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," said curator Laura Blereau.

Art & Shadows
The Art & Shadows program (2014-2015) provided on-site studio space for Lynda Frese and musician David Greely at Shadows-on-the-Teche in New Iberia, Louisiana. The residency was supported by the National Trust for Historic Preservation which acquired the former plantation home in 1958. The Art & Shadows series leveraged the site’s unique buildings, gardens, and collections. Frese combined vintage photos and documents from the Shadows' historical archives with her own photographs of household objects and textiles, interior domestic spaces, and the surrounding south Louisiana landscape.

Pacha Mama: earth realm
Pacha Mama: earth realm combines art, essays, prayers, and poems synthesizing themes from the Italian Renaissance and South American earth goddess Pachamama with contributions by Louisiana poet laureate Darrell Bourque. "The art in Pacha Mama: earth realm is lush, complex, and sinister, with traces of Goya and Brothers' Grimm ... to Frese, at the core of natural harmony beats the earth's dark heart."

Reconstituting the Vanished: Gender, Memory, and Placemaking in the Delta South
Reconstituting the Vanished: Gender, Memory and Placemaking in the Delta South (1993-1997), a collaborative installation by Lynda Frese and Dr. Barbara Allen, Virginia Tech University, re-imagined the lives of four women who shaped Louisiana history: Marie-Thereze Coin-Coin (1742-1816), the Baroness Pontalba (1795-1874), Caroline Dormon (1888-1971), and Marie Laveau (1801-1881). The exhibition traveled nationally to over thirty public venues with image and text installations which explored large-scale early digital photography processes, while "extending a new feminist reading of these women's pasts and the places they built, to recover and reconstruct a new gender-inclusive public memory."

Immagini Pagane
Lynda Frese: Immagini Pagane (Pagan Imaging), 2000, publication and exhibition at Palazzo Farnese, Ortona, Italy, addresses the divine feminine with depictions of Madonna and goddess figures from pagan mythologies; critical essays by Dr. Remo Palmirani, founder of Museo Ex Libris Mediterraneo, and Alison Smith, head curator National Portrait Gallery, London.

Solo Exhibitions

 * 2018 Lynda Frese: Holy Memories & Earthly Delights, 40-year survey exhibition, Hilliard Art Museum, Lafayette, LA
 * 2018 Sacred Vessels, Lynda Frese and Babette Beaullieu, Levee Gallery, Monroe, LA. (2018)
 * 2018 Stage of the Ancients, Good Children Gallery, New Orleans, LA. (2018)
 * 2015 Art & Shadows, Shadows-on-the-Teche, New Iberia, LA (2015)
 * 2015 Reconstituting the Vanished: Memory, Gender and Placemaking in the Delta South, Virginia Tech U, Blacksburg, VA.
 * 2012 Earth Voices (Serie di Artisti in Residenza: Through the Lens), Borgo della Marmotta, Spoleto, Italy
 * 2011 Pacha Mama: earth realm, Acadiana Center for the Arts, Lafayette, LA and Redbud Gallery, Houston, TX
 * 2003 Montage: Lynda Frese, New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, New Orleans, LA
 * 2000, Immagini Pagane, Palazzo Farnese, Ortona, Italy
 * 1998 Post Modern Ex-Votos, James Gallery, Houston, TX
 * 1996 Reconstituting the Vanished: the Baroness Pontalba and the Shaping of Urban New Orleans, Louisiana State Museum, New Orleans, LA and Reconstituting the Vanished: Caroline Dormon’s Gift of the Wild Things, Hilliard Art Museum, Lafayette, LA
 * 1995 Lynda Frese, Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, MS
 * 1986 Perspectives, John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI

Group Exhibitions

 * 2020, Revelations: Recent Acquisitions to the Permanent Collection, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, LA.
 * 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013 International Collective Exhibition, Gallery Le Logge, Assisi, Italy.
 * 2016 XIX Encuentros Abiertos: Rastros de Irrealidad, Festival de la Luz, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
 * 2016 The Great California Art Movement, 1960’s-1990’s: UC Davis Fine Art Alumni Exhibition, Natsoulas Gallery, Davis, CA
 * 2006Vision/ Re-Vision: Louisiana Photography, Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, LA
 * 1999 Picturing Home, Center for Photography at Woodstock, NY
 * 1996 Picturing the South: A Survey of Southern Photography from 1860-1995, The High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA
 * 1996 The South by Its Photographers, Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL, Columbia Museum of Art, Columbia, NC, Center for Arts and Sciences, Baton Rouge, LA
 * 1996 Refiguring Nature: Women in the Landscape, SF CameraWork, San Francisco, CA
 * 1989 Beyond Permission, Houston Center for Photography, TX
 * 1986 Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture 40th Anniversary Exhibition, Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, NY
 * 1985 Perimeters of Twentieth Century Photography, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
 * 1982 SECA Photography Invitational, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA

Collections

 * Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Houston, TX
 * San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
 * High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA
 * Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, LA
 * Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, Davis, CA
 * Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, MS
 * Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA
 * Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL
 * Center for Photography at Woodstock, NY
 * Hilliard Art Museum, Lafayette, LA
 * Center for Louisiana Studies, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, LA

Publications

 * 2023 Leibesgedichte (Love Poems) anthology of art and poetry, Redbud Art Center, Houston, TX
 * 2022 Twenty Years of Marais Press: Imprinting a Campus and Collection, University of Louisiana Press, Lafayette, LA
 * 2021 Through Mama’s Eyes: Unique Perspectives in Southern Matriarchy, University of Louisiana Press, Lafayette, LA.
 * 2020 Intention, Honest Art Productions documentary film subject, premier New Orleans French Film Festival, LA
 * 2018 Lynda Frese: Holy Memories & Earthly Delights; 89 pages, University of Louisiana Press, Lafayette, LA
 * 2016 Rastros de Irrealidad (Vestiges of Reality), XIX Encuentros Abiertos. Festival de la Luz, Buenos Aires, Argentina
 * 2016 The Great California Art Movement UC Davis Fine Art Alumni Exhibition: 1960-1990, Natsoulas Press, Davis, CA
 * 2012 Fifty Years of Bay Area Art: The SECA Awards, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
 * 2011 Lynda Frese: Pacha Mama: earth realm, ATLAS Louisiana Artists and Scholars fund, Baton Rouge, LA. 64 pages.
 * 2010 Masters Collage: Leading Works by Major Artists Lark Books, Asheville, NC
 * 2006 Hindu Deities along the Gulf Coast, Journal of Southern Religion (Katrina issue), Florida State U, Tallahassee, FL
 * 2006 New Orleans and Katrina, Journal of Architectural Education, Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, WDC
 * 2000 Lynda Frese: Immagini Pagane. 60 pages, Italian/English texts, Progetti Farnesiani, Italy
 * 1998 River Styx Magazine, Big River Association, St. Louis, MO
 * 1998 SLEEP: Bedtime Reading (photographers & writers). Rizzoli Press, NY, NY
 * 1996 Refiguring Nature: Women in the Landscape, CAMERAWORK: A Journal of Photographic Arts, SF Camerawork, San Francisco, CA
 * 1996 Picturing the South: 1860 to the Present, Photographers and Writers. Chronicle Books, San Francisco, CA
 * 1996 The South by its Photographers, Mississippi Press, Pascagoula, MS
 * 1996 Reconstituting the Vanished: The Baroness Pontalba and the Shaping of Urban New Orleans, Barbara Allen and Lynda Frese, Flora Levy Foundation, UL Lafayette, Lafayette, LA
 * 1986 Skowhegan: A Ten-Year Retrospective 1975-1985. Leo Castelli Gallery and Portland Museum of Art

Recognition

 * 2024 ArtLab, Artist-in-Residence, Mountain Lake Biological Station, University of Virginia, VA
 * 2023 Vashon Artist Residency, Vashon, WA
 * 2020 Hambidge Center for the Arts, artist in residence, Rabun Gap, GA.
 * 2016 Professor Emeritus, University of Louisiana at Lafayette
 * 2016 Louisiana Artist of the Year, Louisiana Cultural Awards, Baton Rouge, LA
 * 2009, 2004 American Academy in Rome, visiting artist/scholar, Rome, Italy
 * 2007-2016 SLEMCO/BORSF Endowed Professorship in Art and Architecture, UL Lafayette, LA
 * 1994 Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Arts
 * 2000 Artist Fellowship Award, Louisiana State Arts Council, Baton Rouge, LA
 * 1999 Bogliasco Foundation Fellowship, Bogliasco Study Center, Genoa, Italy
 * 1997 Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship, the Bellagio Center, Bellagio, Italy
 * 1985 Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture Fellowship, Skowhegan, ME