[6] Frederick's interest in paper as a medium began in 1976, when she visited Ahmedebad, India, where Robert Rauschenberg had completed a papermaking project.

[8][9] Since 1996, Frederick has taught printmaking and graduate studies at George Mason University's School of Art, where she serves as director of the department's imprint, Navigation Press.

[12][13] Her video work “Dislocations” (2011) has been compared to Andy Warhol by curator Jeffry Cudlin;[14] Critic Paul Ryan described her work in “Hungry Ghosts” (2011) as "drawing us closer to victims as they linger within the beyond – a liminal space conceptually akin to that described by post-colonial theorist Homi K. Bhabha as a physical space and occurrences where …there is a sense of disorientation, a disturbance of direction..an exploratory, restless movement….” [15] Ryan also noted that "Hungry Ghosts" was influenced by Frederick's interest in Buddhist teachings and meditation practices.

[15] In her 2010 solo exhibition, Dissonance at Hollins University’s Eleanor D. Wilson Art Museum, Frederick referenced the atomic bomb and the Cold War, themes that have often surfaced in her work.

[13][16] She explored similar themes in her 1995 collaborative book with Bridget Lambert, Abracadabra, which used fifty images to “represent the 50 years of Frederick's life from 1945 to 1995.” [17] Frederick's Masse Ici, exhibited at Texann Ivy Fine Arts in 1998, “delve[d] deeply into issues of our technological age and the landscape of memory.