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.