Anya was born in Norwalk, Connecticut. After a debilitating leg and nerve injury, she began dancing as a form of physical therapy, eventually traveling to New York while still in middle school to train in the Balanchine technique with teachers from The New York City Ballet. She continued her training in New York and by fourteen was a scholarship student at The Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance, commuting from Connecticut after school to dance with their Teenage Ensemble. The daughter of two educators from disparate cultural backgrounds, Anya’s upbringing was divided between suburban Connecticut and her mother’s native Eastern Kentucky mountains. In addition to an active professional dance career, Anya was President of the Westport Young Democrats, interned on Capitol Hill for Senator Christopher J. Dodd D-CT, was one of nine National Scholarship winners of the Discover Card Tribute Awards and wrote a column for her local newspaper. She enrolled at Yale University and began her art training under the guidance of Tod Papageorge and Gregory Crewdson. While at Yale, she received numerous grants including the Adrian Van Sinderan Award, the Richter Grant, and the Sudler Grant for the Performing Arts and the Saint Anthony Hall Education Fellowship. She was the Co-Founder of the Group for the Alliance of Life and Art and appeared in eight major theater productions as an undergraduate. In her junior year, she was elected to the Elizabethan Society for her achievement in rare book collecting and English Literature. She received her MFA from Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA in Photography and Interdisciplinary Studies in Performance and Installation
Anya began her work in
photojournalism as the Opposition Field Research Tracker for Hillary
Clinton’s 2000 Senate campaign before leaving to freelance for
The New York Times Magazine.
In graduate school, Anya began to work in a variety of mediums,
including returning to sculpture, Her work began to address themes of
self-doubt, the cleavage of growing up as a cultural mutt, and a dark
humor imbedded in the sometimes innocuous symbols of femininity. She
currently approaches both her studio and performance practice like a mad
scientist working a lab, testing out various combinations, springing
mouse traps for visitors, and creating equations that sometimes only
make sense to her alone. Currently Anya lives and works in Westport,
Connecticut and Udon Thani, Thailand.
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