Lynda Frese (b.1956) grew up in New York and Rhode Island and moved out west to study art. She holds a BFA degree (1978) and MFA degree (1986) from the University of California at Davis. She is a 2016 professor emeritus at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, where she taught photography and design in the College of the Arts. She lives and works in south Louisiana. The artist’s photography, painting, and printmaking has been shown in solo and group exhibitions across the USA and in Italy, where she has often worked as an artist-in-residence. Frese’s work is represented in private art and public collections, including the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, the Center for Photography at Woodstock, the High Museum of Art, the Mississippi Museum of Art, and the Manetti Shrem Museum. The 2025 solo exhibition Lynda Frese: Far-Out at the Acadiana Center for the Arts in Lafayette, Louisiana, was a multi-year project about UFOs as potent objects for reflection. “The boundaries of the natural and supernatural world are explored in my work by borrowing themes from religion and myth, and UFO lore. My photography is of wilderness places, showing the sentient forests, rivers, and precious animals. My work taps into the surreal aspects of collage and comes with an environmental message.”