Frances Anderson

Frances E. Anderson is considered one of the pioneers of art therapy. She is an honorary lifetime member of the American Art Therapy Association (AATA). Anderson is a researcher, a distinguished professor, an author, and the first art therapist to receive the Fulbright Senior Scholar Award.She has also served as the editor of Art Therapy, Journal of the American Art Therapy Association, and as a member of the AATA Education and Program Approval Board.She has written nearly 80 papers and made 130 presentations regarding her work. Anderson has worked with several populations, including children with disabilities and adult survivors of incest. She has also worked extensively overseas through an organization titled Communities Healing through Art, or CHART, which serves areas affected by natural and other disasters.

Frances E. Anderson faced many struggles while growing up. Her family struggled financially due to her father's profession as a preacher, and she later attended a prep school where she found it hard to relate to other children. She stated in the book Architects of art therapy: Memoirs and life stories that her sole friend from childhood died her eighth grade year. Despite these struggles, she went on to college and eventually found her calling as an art therapist.

Anderson began her educational career at Agnes Scott College; a prestigious all women's college, where she started out as an English major. Anderson had trouble keeping up with assignments and decided to change her major to art during her sophomore year.Watercolor, clay, and photography were her preferred media.Additionally, Anderson took many psychology courses with one of her favorite undergraduate professors.Upon doing research for one of her psychology papers, Anderson discovered the Bulletin of Art Therapy, which led her to pursuing a career in art therapy. In 1964, Anderson transferred to Indiana University Bloomington where she simultaneously earned her master's degree and teaching certificate less than a year after graduating with her bachelor's degree.She began work as a teacher in a small schoolhouse for children with disabilities in Southern Indiana after completing herundergraduate degree.This career opportunity sparked her interest of working with children who have disabilities. Soon after her teaching career began, Anderson returned to school at Indiana University Bloomington in 1968 to earn her doctorate in art education.Her doctoral research primarily focused on the use of art in mental hospitals.

Anderson took the Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) twice (scoring lower the second time), but Indiana University Bloomington admitted her because of the grades she achieved in her undergraduate studies. She struggled with writing, language, and verbal direction and was later diagnosed with learning disabilities. Despite her learning disabilities with reading and writing, Anderson still became the top student in her doctorate program. Her personal experiences with these challenges helped her to understand the needs of populations with developmental disabilities.She supplied dozens of adaptations and suggestions for teachers of children with any kind of disability in her text entitled, Art-centered Education and Therapy for Children with Disabilities.

After she graduated, Anderson continued publishing two articles per year. It was then that her research began shifting focus to special populations and traumatized adults and children. She completed a major research study that incorporated a review of all the published research articles involving quantifiable data in art, music, dance, and drama for people with disabilities.Funded by the National Committee on Arts for the Handicapped, the goal of the study was to demonstrate the knowledge and quality of life that the arts bring to a person.

Anderson attended the founding meeting of the American Art Therapy Association (AATA), in Louisville, Kentucky on June 29, 1969 upon graduating with her doctorate degree.When the AATA started the registration process of dividing its membership into regions, Anderson declined the title of research chair and instead became the first Midwest standards chair in 1972. Anderson set the expectations for research suggesting that, despite the difficulty in establishing quantifiable data in art therapy, more research needed to be conducted to provide evidence for the effects and benefits of art therapy.

In 1972, Anderson conducted research with Helen Landgarten documenting the interest and need for art therapy in mental health facilities in the Midwest and Southern California.Anderson and Landgarten presented their findings in Columbus, Ohio at the fifth annual AATA Conference, and publications of the results were also included in the Bulletin of Art Therapy and Studies in Art Education.

In 1977, Anderson took part in the seventh annual AATA conference, and sat on a panel titled Art therapy: An exploration of values.Here, she advocated for the immersion of art education. Anderson was able to continue to advocate and provide research for her field by serving on AATA's Education and Program Approval Board (EPAB).

Anderson's research helped aid the creation of a graduate training program at Illinois State University (ISU), in 1989.Anderson became the director of the program and worked to obtain grants that would be used for assistantships and tuition waivers. She assisted in the expansion of the program by seeking funding to support more art therapy educators, and by continuing research.Anderson recruited recognized doctorate-level art therapists such as Marcia Rosal, Doris Arrington, and Valeria Appleton among others, to teach weekend courses at ISU.She supported the idea of exposing students to educators with assorted experiences and preferred theoretical perspectives.

Anderson began volunteering in the lab school at ISU, where she was able to work as part of a treatment team for children with auditory, visual, physical, mental and emotional disabilities. She learned methods for working with children from her mentor, Larry Barnfield, and used her passion to help the children learn about themselves and their environment. Anderson also later assisted in the establishment of the art therapy graduate program at Florida State University.

Inspired by her mentor, Barnfield, and the lack of publications on art with children with disabilities, Anderson wrote her first book: Art for All the Children: A Creative Sourcebook for the Impaired Child.In 1988, Anderson revised her first book and published Art for All the Children: Approaches to Art Therapy for Children with Disabilities.Anderson asserts in both books that children with impairments or different ways of learning are, first and foremost, children.This assertion is evident throughout her texts as she details such things as impairments and abuse that children experience, normal artistic development of children, specific adaptations for children in the art room, how art can fit into individualized education programs (IEPs), and creative directives and activities to do with children. Anderson also provides a number of art activities that can be performed in learning classes to enforce theories and concepts. In Anderson's third book, she wrote an additional chapter on “developing a sense of self through art”. She believed that a child gains a more cohesive understanding of the self/the human body by first learning about one body part at a time, and then putting all of the concepts together.

When AATA established its first journal in 1982, Anderson became a member of the journal's committee due to her experience with publications.In 2000, Anderson became the editor for the journal.While working as editor, she faced the additional challenges of battling breast cancer, in which she beat.

Anderson has worked to facilitate the immersion of art education and art therapy. Alongside Sandra Packard, she published an article titled "A Shared Identity Crisis: Art Education and Art Therapy?" that detailed the similarities and overlapping qualities of art therapy and art education.

At one point during her career, Anderson was approached by a former student and asked to work with a group of female survivors of childhood sexual abuse; a project that ended up being eight years of clinical work. Anderson had previously been affected by sexual harassment in the workplace when she shut down sexual passes from a committee member who later denied her a promotion.Because of this experience, she approached work with female childhood sexual abuse survivors with extreme caution. Working with this population reportedly proved to be the most difficult work for Anderson, and it had an intense effect on her personal artwork and spirituality. While working with these groups of women, Anderson developed what she called "People Pots". With her first clay group, one of the directives (or art exercises) was to create a clay sculpture of a pet or animal. This prompt brought up emotional stories from the group of parents torturing and killing pets. In response, Anderson began creating small pots with people and animals in them.As the group sessions continued, the pots and figures became larger and started to touch each other. Anderson realized that these "People Pots" were serving as a metaphor for the clay groups; the women were connecting and beginning to touch each other socially and emotionally.The women in the clay groups showed significant signs of progress in therapy. They had survived sexual abuse by blocking emotions, and Anderson discovered that manipulating clay caused a great number of suppressed emotional memories to surface in the group members. Due to this finding, she believed that manipulating clay was a kinesthetic learning experience that prevented people from remaining emotionally stagnant. Anderson reflected on the experience as facing "the evils" and also adding the spiritual aspects to the process helped empower the women. One group member reported that she had been in therapy for 20 years, but did not experience any emotional changes until the clay group.As these groups were part of a grant project, Anderson documented the outcome with a journal article, four conference presentations, a monograph, and a video entitled Courage! Together We Heal.

In April 2001, Anderson was recognized as the first art therapist to ever receive the Fulbright Senior Scholar Award (FSSA).In 2002, Anderson resigned as editor of the AATA journal, and retired from her post at ISU so that she could travel to teach a research course for four months in Buenos Aires. Here, she also collected data to add to her artistic development scale.In 2005, Anderson became the second art therapist to win the Fulbright Specialist Grant, which allowed her to travel to Taiwan, Thailand, and Pakistan, and eventually play a role in establishing the first Taiwan art therapy program.

Anderson continues to remain active in CHART and AATA.

• Art for All the Children: A Creative Sourcebook for the Impaired Child
• Art for All the Children: Approaches to Art Therapy for Children with Disabilities
• Art-centered Education and Therapy for Children with Disabilities
• Art for the Handicapped
• A Review of the Published Literature on Arts and the Handicapped, 1971-1981