Former newspaper editor became multimedia artist

Hope Frazier, 60, a former newspaper editor who turned to photography and art in the 1990s, died Saturday of colon cancer at her Ojai home, said her husband, Doug Adrianson.

Frazier was executive editor of the Pasadena Star News, the San Gabriel Valley Tribune and the Whittier Daily News and a vice president of the San Gabriel Newspaper Group from 1992 to 1996. Before moving to California, she had worked as an editor at the Miami Herald and the Memphis Commercial Appeal.

After retiring from journalism in 1996, Frazier moved to Ojai with Adrianson, a former Los Angeles Times editor. She set up a studio and employed various media for her art: photography, solar etching, poetry and film.

Her work was displayed at the Museum of Ventura County, the Ojai Center for the Arts and other galleries. She also served as a member of the Ojai Arts Commission.

Last spring, Frazier’s multimedia work, “BRUSHY Between the Halves of My Heart,” documenting the effects of coal mining in her native Appalachia, was exhibited at the Reece Museum at East Tennessee State University.

Frazier was born Oct. 20, 1947, in Kingsport, Tenn., and studied journalism at the University of Tennessee.