Anno’s father was a beatnik physicist and her mother a nurse and civil rights activist brought her to speeches by Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy where she was embedded in the "social upheaval and personal liberation" of the time.
Anno was inspired by these activist mass gatherings, "whether cultural, like folk or rock-n-roll festivals, or political, such as the Chicano moratorium, Cambodian bombing protests, or the UFW’s Gallo boycott."
Near by Dogtown Z boys were "inventing skateboarding" with Jeff Ho’s surf shop gang and Peggy Oki, LA’s feminist and conceptual art movement was in full swing, as was the beginning of the punk scene by the 80s, "the electricity of the time ignited [Anno's] creativity, it’s the current running through [her] work all the way to the present.
[4] There she was influenced by the work of the graphic designer Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, and interdisciplinary artist Suzanne Lacy, both part of the Feminist art movement in the United States.
[citation needed] From 2007 to 2014 poet Anne Carson and Anno collaborated on a series of three limited edition artist’s books commissioned by Benedict’s/ St. John’s University One Crow Press: Sleep (2007); The Mirror of Simple Souls (2003); and The Albertine Workout (2014).