In that trip up the peninsula she sees many things outside her window­everything from blue herons wading in the lake near Caltrain's Bayshore stop to the bulky, multicolored graffiti scrawled on nearly every wall and fence along the tracks near South San Francisco.

It is not surprising that Frank, who also won the San Mateo competition in 2002, says she enjoys the journey to downtown San Francisco—her own artwork contains landscapes as diverse as those along the train tracks. Although Frank doesn't create graffiti, she does incorporate quotations carefully written in all types of calligraphy. She incorporates the writing so that her work, in a sense, won't just 'flash by' the viewer.

"It causes the viewer to slow down and really think about the words they read," says Frank, who mines her words from the quote books that pack a bookshelf in her living room. "I am impressed with how many people seem touched by the words I write."

Frank came to Sunnyvale after graduating in 1976 from the University of New Mexico with a master's in art education. Since graduating she has worked for the Fremont Union High School District, teaching adults how to do watercolor and calligraphy, and she has instructed children's art classes in Cupertino. Most recently, she taught in the East Union High School District, where she will return in January. She is also a founding member of Pacific Scribes, a group of 130 calligraphers that learn and study new techniques together and share their artwork in exhibits.

Frank was born and raised in New Mexico, a place of vast deserts, where a painter's mind can freely roam and gather all sorts of subject material.

"Her style is totally inspirational," says Kay Woolfolk, a former student whose nomination helped Frank earn recognition in 1997 as Cupertino's distinguished fine artist of the year. "She gets people to want to be calligraphers. She plays around with things and then comes up with these beautiful solutions."

Just as some youths wander in darkness amid the industrial junk along the railroad tracks looking to make their mark, Frank conceives of many of her pieces while spilling paints and other materials on canvases in her backyard.

Frank's piece Birth, which won her the scholarship to the academy, was born in that manner. After she plopped sticky white paint onto the center of the canvas, she trickled water from her garden hose onto it and watched as the gooey glob crawled out in different directions over the canvas painted midnight blue. When watercolors were mixed in, a misty cloud appeared, with hues of pink, blue and purple.

She then wrote the entire alphabet in jumbo-sized Roman letters overlapping each other on the cloud. Frank noticed that her creation resembled the explosive birth of a star, so she wrote the word "birth" using a 24-carat gold paint, painstakingly applied with a leaf. Finally, she framed the entire piece with a quote about the birth of stars written in small italic letters.

Frank's studies at the academy have done more than broaden her geographical horizons. She has explored new territory, such as sculpting. One day, she says, she might like to sculpt her friendly 6-foot-long iguana, who greets visitors to her home from his large tank in the corner of her living room.

"The academy's pushing me in new directions that I hope to combine with my calligraphy," Frank says.