Anderson, Sara

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Anderson, Sara

Personal

Female. Education: Attended Cornell University.

Addresses

Home—1522 Post Alley, No. 206, Seattle, WA 98101. E-mail—Sara@saranderson.com.

Career

Artist, designer, and children's book author and illustrator. Product designer of home furnishings, housewares, and children's products; clients include Museum of Modern Art, Neiman Marcus, Bloomingdale's, Crate & Barrel, UNICEF, Target Corporation, Nature Company, Sur la Table, Takashimaya, and Recycled Paper Products.

Writings

SELF-ILLUSTRATED

Numbers, Dutton (New York, NY), 1988.

Colors, Dutton (New York, NY), 1988.

Some of My Best Friends Are Polka-Dot Pigs, S. Anderson Design (Seattle, WA), 1996.

Hey Diddle Diddle, and Other Nursery Rhyme Favorites, Handprint Books (Brooklyn, NY), 2003.

Noisy City Day, Handprint Books (Brooklyn, NY), 2005.

Noisy City Night, Handprint Books (Brooklyn, NY), 2005.

Octopus Oyster Hermit Crab Snail: A Poem of the Sea, Handprint Books (Brooklyn, NY), 2005.

A Day at the Market, Handprint Books (Brooklyn, NY),2006.

Colors, Handprint Books (New York, NY), 2007.

Numbers, Handprint Books (New York, NY), 2007.

ILLUSTRATOR

Rick Agran, Pumpkin Shivaree, Handprint Books (Brooklyn, NY), 2003.

Doug Anderson, Too Big to Dance: A Crawdad County Book, Handprint Books (Brooklyn, NY), 2004.

Also designer of Numbers and Colors (counting, shapes, and numbers blocks set), for Handprint Books, 2007.

Sidelights

Sara Anderson is an artist and illustrator whose colorful designs adorn fabrics, ceramics, furniture, and other products. Her clients include such prestigious companies and institutions as Bloomingdale's, Crate & Barrel, the Chicago Art Institute, and New York City's Museum of Modern Art. Anderson is also the author and illustrator of the well-received children's books Octopus Oyster Hermit Crab Snail: A Poem of the Sea and A Day at the Market.

Anderson's success has not come easily, though she did take an early interest in creative endeavors. "I was always trying to fit art in," she remarked to Holly M. Werner in Gifts & Decorative Accessories. "In high school, I took as many art classes as I could." Later, Anderson's sister, who was researching an article for National Geographic on the reindeer herders of northern Scandinavia, convinced Sara to move to Scandinavia. "I lived there six months, and Scandinavian culture and design influenced me incredibly," Anderson told Werner. "There's a celebration of life in a lot of their everyday things." Anderson then attended Cornell University, immersing herself in the study of interior architecture, design, fine art, and anthropology.

Despite her unique and varied background, Anderson struggled financially when she began her own design business, supporting herself by taking odd jobs. "I was very hungry," she recalled to M. Sharon Baker in the Puget Sound Business Journal. "I did whatever I could." Her big break came in 1983 when she landed design work for the Museum of Modern Art and subsequently developed a line of greeting cards. "It's been an enormous struggle and hard work on the national level," Anderson explained. "Determining new and profitable directions has been the hardest aspect of creating a viable business. Sometimes, it can take two years from [a design's] inception for royalties to kick in."

Anderson first delved into publishing in the mid-1980s with two books for New York publisher E.P. Dutton. In 1996 she both wrote and illustrated Some of My Best Friends Are Polka-Dot Pigs, and she has since written and illustrated a number of works for young readers published by Handprint Books. In Octopus Oyster Hermit Crab Snail Anderson explores the rich variety of marine life. In addition to the creatures mentioned in the title, she presents a host of other sea-dwellers that inhabit the coral reefs and open water of the ocean deep, including jellyfish, dolphins, eels, lobsters, and whales. Her "cut-paper collage illustrations draw readers into the rhythm of the sea," wrote Polly L. Kotarba in School Library Journal, and a critic for Kirkus Reviews complimented the author/artist's use of "rich colors and [the] subtle interplay of sharp angles and long curves."

Anderson's self-illustrated A Day at the Market introduces readers to the people and shops in the artist's own neighborhood, the historic Pike Place Market in Seattle, Washington. Using a rhyming text and collage-style illustrations, she shows the marketplace vendors opening their stalls at dawn, shoppers sampling the wares, and cleaning crews preparing for the next day. A Day at the Market earned praise for its dynamic artwork. "The colorful collages are vibrant, energetic, [and] full of interesting details," remarked School Library Journal contributor Be Astengo. In the Seattle Weekly, Roger Downey noted that "what makes the book fun to look at is the flood of lively images, all rendered—flowers, shops, streets, and people—as though composed of colored-paper cutouts ingeniously arranged." According to a Kirkus Reviews critic, Anderson's "kaleidoscopic art nicely captures both the venue's characteristic bustle and its rich sensory experience."

Biographical and Critical Sources

PERIODICALS

Gifts & Decorative Accessories, January, 1996, Holly M. Werner, "Sara Anderson—A Celebration of Life in Everyday Things," p. 196.

Kirkus Reviews, September 15, 2005, review of Octopus Oyster Hermit Crab Snail: A Poem of the Sea, p. 1020; February 1, 2006, review of A Day at the Market, p. 127.

Publishers Weekly, August 4, 2003, review of Pumpkin Shivaree, p. 78; July 12, 2004, review of Too Big to Dance: A Crawdad County Book, p. 62.

School Library Journal, August, 2004 Bina Williams, review of Too Big to Dance, p. 82; December, 2005, Polly L. Kotarba, review of Octopus Oyster Hermit Crab Snail, p. 100; May, 2006, Be Astengo, review of A Day at the Market, p. 107.

Seattle Weekly, December 12, 2005, Roger Downey, "Pike Place Portraits," review of A Day at the Market.

Puget Sound Business Journal, May 13, 1994, M. Sharon Baker, "Years of Struggle Pay off for Multi-talented Designer," pp. 1-2.