Today we’d like to introduce you to Sara Frantz.
Sara, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
I am a midwestern girl, who spent about a decade in Texas going to grad school and soaking up the art/music scene, before landing in California. Basically that means that if you come to my home, I will offer you a cheesy, potato-based casserole way too many times with a few y’alls thrown in for good measure. I am married to my fabulous ex-husband and we are expecting our second child. This means that I no longer spend long alcohol enhanced nights in the studio, but split my time between being an artist, associate professor of studio art, wife, mom, friend, exhausted pregnant lady, and Rupaul’s Drag Race enthusiast. It doesn’t mean that I am not in the studio anymore, it just means I am much more strategic and protective of my time. Society should stop telling women they can have everything, it’s a lie. Mothers (all parents really) have to make sacrifices and compromises. Especially those in creative fields or those who can’t clock out at the end of the day. This lie does so much damage and fuels feelings of guilt and shame when things slide and attention is divided. I fiercely love and am so grateful for my life and family, but I’ve always thought of myself as a painter first, inherently embedded in my identity, and that didn’t change when I became a mother. As I am typing this, my daughter is decorating my arms with dinosaur stickers. She is a joy and has great taste.
We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
Out of time and dislocated from the original space, my latest series of paintings explore the false barriers that create more imagined than real distance between two points of view. Composed from the perspective of being inside a cave, the viewer looks up or out to the sky, unable to touch what the stars may bring. Scenes of hope and want, but also powerlessness, depicted in flat color and faux digital paint marks. Alien and grand in their bareness, the result is an attempt to balance restraint with excess, or at least to temper the anxious over-embellishment with order.
What do you think it takes to be successful as an artist?
I have no idea, and I am not sure I want to know. I am worried that if I ever truly feel satisfied, I will lose my drive and ambition to evolve. Is this where I tell you I am a workaholic?
Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
I have a solo show at Left Field Gallery in April. If you find yourself in Houston, check out the David Shelton Gallery.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.sarafrantz.com
- Email: sarajfrantz@gmail.com
- Instagram: sarajfrantz
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