Featured Volunteer - November 2001

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Last Updated on Monday, 14 November 2011 21:21

In her new role as Program Chair, Frances hopes to arrange speakers from a broad variety of art related venues, such as museums and from outside the area and to set up workshops of interest to members. She has previously done this for acrylics groups she has been associated with in the past.

For many years, she worked in acrylics, but she changed to using watercolors about seven years ago. She doesn’t remember a time in her life when she didn’t draw. She had graduated to painting by the time she was four years old. As a child, she created books of her drawings, which included an interest in girls fashions by the time she was eight.

Originally from Topeka, she majored in fine arts at college. She has studied art with a variety of instructors, including Ben Jacwiak, Suzanne Brooker, and Sal Moccia.

She grew up in a musical family of teachers. As an artist, Frances naturally gravitated to portraiture of musicians and other types of performing artists, such as those in ballet and dance. During her career, she has done murals professionally, which have been published in Better Homes and Gardens and other magazines. She has art in collections in Europe and Asia as well as the United States.

In the past, she taught art at the middle school and college levels. Now, she volunteers with under-privileged second graders; for example, children with parents in prison, in foster homes or dysfunctional families. It takes a lot of time and hard work, but she describes her students as "wonderfully responsive to art." They sit and listen, are polite and are engaged in their own art. Frances especially enjoys witnessing their personal growth.

She has two children and two grandchildren of her own. When I asked if she teaches art to them, she described her three year old granddaughter, whose drawings of animals are recognizable species, even dinosaurs! A busy artist, Frances enjoys all her volunteer work and is excited about her new "job" with EAFA.