Day: February 22, 2018

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Q&A: Lynda Frese

And Artist Talk/book signing is Wednesday, March 7, 6-8 p.m., as part of the museum’s Creative Conversation series.

LAFAYETTE (BHP) – The exhibit, Lynda Frese: Holy Memories & Earthly Delights, is on view at the Hilliard University Art Museum through May 19, 2018.

Opening reception is Friday, February 23, 6-8 p.m., at the HUAM, 710 E. St. Mary Boulevard.

Bayou Hack Press (www.bayouhackpress.com) caught up with Frese via email and the result follows in the following Question & Answer format.

After reading the Q&A, check out lead story here.

BHP: What is it like having your work, a part of yourself – past and present – displayed in one room?

LF: Well, the exhibition is in eight sections and it is not organized by the years of production, which allows visitors to focus on ongoing themes, rather than tedious dates. For many artists– and I think this is true for all kinds of artists, including musicians– we are always making work that is a part of ourselves, parts that are vulnerable and naked. So that is something that happens in any art show to a certain extent.

One of the most valuable outcomes for me was working with a curator and two writers who have identified and articulated recurring themes in years of work, some of which I had not even noticed! For example, there is a large collection of work that metaphorically uses vessels or containers. Other ongoing themes are mythology, as well as how humans exist in the natural world. So these discoveries, which connect the dots, will have a strong impact on my future studio work.

BHP: In many ways, depending on the photog/subject/“job”, straight up photography is art in and of itself.  What made you move from simply taking photographs (if you ever did, come to think of it), to what we see in your work?

LF: Harvey Himelfarb, my photography professor from UC Davis, would say that there is a distinction between “taking” photographs and “making” photographs. Making photographs is a more conscious act, and it encompasses all kinds of photography, straight and manipulated. And really, what photograph is not manipulated in some way? My early training was in printmaking, so I was always interested in this idea of the negative, and playing around with different materials. But combining different photographs together started early for me, even though there are a few “straight” photographs in the show. Visual art is kind of like language, and I am always making up my own vocabulary and syntax.

BHP: If not for photography itself, would you still create the work you do, say, via painting, drawing, sculpting – or any other art form?

LF: Ha, we couldn’t include my drawings and prints and paintings! And, I do like to sing.

BHP: What does the accompanying book add to the exhibit of the same name, “Lynda Frese: Holy Memories & Earthly Delights”?

LF: The book is not a copy of the show, but it does include most of the work, and also a section on Louisiana history and preservation, which has been an important subject in my art, but which we did not end up being able fit into the exhibit.

The catalogue also includes some beautiful writing about the art––you know I think it is very important for artists and writers to work together. Dr. Mary Ann Wilson, a UL distinguished professor, has written a wonderful essay about the matrifocal and feminist aspects of my work, including Art & Shadows, a series made at Shadows-on-the-Teche in New Iberia, about antebellum Louisiana.

Alejandro Malo is the Mexico City-based photography critic who has written exquisitely about the ethics of how artists can speak about nature and environmental issues. We used the excellent title of his text for the exhibition. And finally there is an interview between myself and curator Laura Blereau, who selected the work and designed the show. These interpretive writings are a kind of map for thinking about the art.

BHP: Was there an emotional toll going through work for this exhibit? If so, how and why? If not, how and why?

LF: The project was years in the making and it was an emotional journey for sure. “Toll” is an interesting word, does that mean I’m on the freeway now? The exhibit includes many gelatin-silver prints from my darkroom days in Davis, California, where I lived for ten years; and it was kind of wild to go over that territory again, to think about the family members and friends who were my models. We sure got naked a lot!

Putting together an exhibition and publication of this magnitude has so many pieces to it, and involves so many collaborations. I really tried to lean into the expertise of others. There is so much to be learned from looking through the lens of someone else’s eyes, to use a photography metaphor.

BHP: Where do you go from here?

LF: I think what I’d like to say here is that my concern for the environment has grown, obviously. These are dire times. If there is any impact my voice as an artist can have, I am grateful for that.

More on Frese, and the exhibition itself, can be found here  and in the Exhibition Announcement. Also, visit the artist’s website, www.lyndafrese.com.

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Frese Frame: Bob, Ned and Lynda

The Singer. 2016. Lynda Frese.

By Dominick Cross

(Full disclosure: I am the Volunteer Manager at the Paul and Lulu Hilliard University Art Museum)

LAFAYETTE — Lynda Frese dropped by the Hilliard University Art Museum last week and gave staff and docents plenty of background, stories and other good stuff on her exhibit, Lynda Frese: Holy Memories & Earthly Delights.

The exhibition, which runs through May 19, 2018, follows Frese’s work from 1978 to present and is divided into eight categories. A Q&A with the artist accompanies this story.

An opening reception is Friday, February 23, 6-8 p.m. at the Hilliard, 710 E. St. Mary Boulevard. INFO: 337.482.2278.

The public can get the inside track on her installation come Wednesday, March 7, with an Artist Talk/book signing, 6-8 p.m., as part of the museum’s Creative Conversation series.

And come March 16, there’s Uncorked: Lynda Frese, a ticketed, artist-led tour that includes wine and cheese.

Each piece, each series has it’s own stories.

“I decided to put Bob Dylan and Ned, my Catahoula dog, together. I think Ned and Dylan need to be near each other,” said Frese of the 2016 piece, adding, “I’m glad to see that there’s a lot of very recent work in the show.

“Artists are the most attached to the work they’re doing right now and I have been working on this series called ‘The Singer,’” she said. “There are a few of them here.”

Frese went on to talk about the series, The Singer, that gets a lot of questions.

“This one is the eponymous title piece of the series. This is an older picture of young Dylan. And this is the Basilica in Assisi. It was a large gelatin silver picture that I found in a flea market,” said Frese. “And then down below are my photographs of the Sardinia and Nawrocki monuments that dot the island of Sardinia. There are over 4,000 of them made of stone.

“And I like how, you know, you’re like in the temple, but also outside of the temple,” she said. “There’s a feeling of space that it’s both sacred space, but then he’s smoking, so it’s also just normal, more plain kinds of spaces instead of these highly refined sacred areas. I like those two together.

Frese has lived in Assisi, Italy, during the summer for five years.

“You see a lot of pilgrims coming through. So for me, and this is not necessarily true of the audience, but for me they represent pilgrimage and how people go look for certain kinds of experiences that are attached to their belief systems, whatever they are,” said Frese. “And you see a lot of people come from far away to Assisi.

“And you see a lot of people who are moved by the art and the proximity to the story of St. Frances and the pope who was named after him,” she said. “But also you see a lot of boredom.

“You see extreme disappointment and also blissed-out places of touching the gods here. And so, they were also about the masks of God, and how dogs can be the masks of God, Dylan can be the mask of God. Anybody, you know, your lover, your mother; your puppy can be the mask of God.”

Frese explained what went into her work.

“In some of them, I’ve also used ground-out lead crystal from the island next to Venice, from Murano,” Frese said. “And it’s something that I have learned when I was studying egg tempera that the renaissance artists would mix the ground lead crystal into their paints to make it a little bit more luminous.

“It’s not iridescent. It’s just very subtle luminosity where the light gets underneath the crystals,” explained Freee. “And I think that happens with the colors, too. The egg tempera sits on the top of the photograph, and as the layers build up, the light, when it strikes the image, goes underneath the small pieces of pigment and lights them from behind.

“And that’s why egg tempera has this really beautiful luminosity to it. And the ground crystal, which is in a few of the works in here, really enhances that feeling,” she said. “But it’s dangerous to work with.”
Frese said she turned to her art to deal with the death of her dog, Ned, who died after a long life spent together.

“I thought I would make some pictures about that. It started off with something really private and just a way to deal with my own grief,” said Frese. “But then I started getting into dogs and animals. There are not a lot of animals in here, but I’m getting more interested in animals and I think they’re going to show up more.”

And she also elaborated about Bob Dylan.

“But the Dylan pictures, for me, they also speak about my closeness to the culture here and to the club scene and dancing and enjoying music and my relationship with different musicians here,” Frese said. “The world of music and musicians has a lot of beautiful parallels with being an artist with this idea of something very private, and even solitary, becoming public and being in the spotlight all of a sudden.

“You see these singers and they’re making a presentation of a song that might be breaking their heart, but there they are right up in front of people doing it,” she said. “So there’s this public persona, but at the same time it’s also about kind of an internal world you can’t quite see. I like that dichotomy going back and forth.”

More on Frese, and the exhibition itself, can be found here  and in the Exhibition Announcement. Also, visit the artist’s website, www.lyndafrese.com.