We were lucky to catch up with Sandy Fritz recently and have shared our conversation below.

Sandy, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s talk legacy – what sort of legacy do you hope to build?

My art business consists of original artwork, digital artwork, product licensing and teaching FUN Art Classes. Teaching is where I hope my legacy lives on. I get great satisfaction from creating happy FUN art. It allows me to play with color and pattern and gives me a voice to spread joy and zest for life. I teach in various locations in the US and my motto is “you are creative…you just don’t know it yet”. I didn’t start out with this approach but it’s something that spoke to me as I began my travels as a FUN Art artist. When entering my classrooms, I was meeting more and more people who would declare they weren’t creative or couldn’t draw a straight line. After hearing that over and over, I changed my focus from classes that taught “paint like me” to more focus on learning how to use the mediums and YOU find your own voice. Since making that change in perspective, people still enter with those same declarations but now I say, “Great you are my kind of people!” To those who say they are not creative, I tell them that today is about having FUN, letting go, and jumping in to experience creating and learning something new”. I now have many students who keep in touch and send me pictures of what they are creating or ask for advice on how to progress. These students also seek out my classes when I’m in their area. This excites me so much that I celebrate them on my IG and FB posts. Celebrating that everyone can create and have FUN while doing it is essential. Not all art has to be in a museum or for sale. There is absolute joy in creating because we want to create. That is the legacy I’d like to have when this life on Earth is finished. I will be watching from above and cheering everyone on doing FUN art!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Hello, I’m a FUN Art Artist. I grew up around art my whole life. My Dad, Bill
Fritz, a retired advertising art director and is also an amazing artist. His style is representational and he
currently creates oil paintings of the Rocky Mountains, midwest farms and florals. I tried my
whole life to paint like him without much success so I put my energy into crafting doing everything except paint. When my kids were teens it was time for me to find a hobby other than
them and my career as a nationally certified American Sign Language Interpreter, which I loved.
I found a couple private art studios in my area and signed up for painting lessons. I gravitated
towards collage because it wasn’t painting but I could manipulate the torn paper and colors to
create a piece of art. I furthered my skills with more professional artist-lead workshops of all
kinds and found my voice as a mixed media collage artist. I thought I was set and for about 8
years I created hundreds of art pieces and gained a small following. I was thrilled as this was
my side hustle and a great stress reliever for me. As life does it threw me a few curve balls and
I found myself relocating to Loveland, CO from Queen Creek, AZ. Moving to Colorado opened me up to
finding new friends who were mostly artists and their influence fed my creative spirit to keep pushing
and trying new mediums. I then remarried and my husband and I sold our house, bought an
RV and started traveling full-time. That was 5 years ago and it was the decision to go on the road that ultimately further evolved my creativity. I became a FUN Art Artist with the focus on creating happy joyous
art, not worrying about whether it would match a sofa or curtains. I am happy to say that I have embraced painting, often adding pattern and texture to my creations as my way to express movement throughout the piece. (not sure about this sentence here) I’m working on. My classes have evolved from a “learn to paint what I paint” method to an “art should be FUN” method. Finally, I am working on licensing my digital images as well as my traditional art pieces. Andy Warhol was my childhood idol in the art world. Not only did I love his artwork, I also thought it was so exciting to see his images on textiles and merchandise. I remember saving my allowance to buy a mug with a Warhol image. As a result, surface design licensing has always been a goal of mine and am thrilled to be making it happen. I have created 2 book covers for indie author, Emersyn Park, and they have been received with gusto. I hope to partner with more indie authors. I find it exciting to collaborate with other creative people who are chasing their dreams. In order to grow my FUN art business, I’m looking forward to partnering with an agent or line of products to have my FUN whimsical art
brought to the mainstream home decorating and fashion industries. Life is already too serious so surround yourself with some FUN Art!

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

At the age of 23 I bought a retail floral shop without ANY knowledge of running a business or floral designs . I knew I was creative (but not a painter) so I borrowed the capital investment and I was given the keys to the shop. My mom, Sunny Fritz, had purchased a separate flower shop 4 months prior, I adopted the name of her shop so that we would sound larger than we were. We worked together to build our businesses but remained separate. I learned early on that I knew nothing so I relied heavily on the talented employees we had. That was my stroke of genius because they really did help develop my business over the years. I could have never done it alone. We tried several different approaches, weddings, business accounts, Friday specials…you name it we tried it. The flower shop became very successful to the point I needed to scale back a bit so we all could have personal lives. We were all starting families and that was a priority. The biggest take away was if I decided to scale back one area such a weddings due to all the weekend work involved we couldn’t do that until we had a Mon-Fri income replacement. It is real easy to just stop something, it’s a business person who understands you have to create other revenue to stay in business. So now 35 years later, I’m a full-time artist and I use all the lessons I gained in that prior business experience with my creative endeavors. It excites me to get new ideas, try new things and see where they go. Not all ideas are a business builder and that’s just fine because they always lead me to a better way of running my business. One example in my art business happened 6 years ago. My friend , Sara, asked if I could paint her a garden pole. I took that as a challenge and researched materials, paint, sealer, and solar lights and came up with what became a very popular art form for me. I call them Whimsey Poles. I sell them on in my Etsy shop: sandyfunart.Etsy.com. I have taught hundreds of classes all over the US. for 5 years. I no longer teach the classes due to our traveling changing but I do continue to paint them for collectors. Since quieting my Whimsey Pole classes I used what I learned years ago in the floral industry; I must replace that income. I now have a new product and class called FUN Shine Lamps. It is my nod to the Lava Lamp. How FUN is that? I have teamed with Fort Collins Plastics to develop the globe and fit for the LED light base and am now ready to put them into the world. The resilience of these lessons is don’t be a know it all. Let your people have a voice and follow their lead. They are your greatest resource and should be celebrated as such.

Any stories or insights that might help us understand how you’ve built such a strong reputation?

I built my reputation in my market by being approachable and excited about my art form. I share it with anyone who asks. I have so much passion about bringing art to everyone either as a student or a collector and I find it to be contagious. I love buying art from local artists to support them. We have lived in our RV for 5 years and the first thing people say when they come in is, “Wow, you have original art everywhere”. I practice what I preach and it shows. My classes are FUN and my branding is FUN. I recently traveled back to our town in CO and heard from a few friends that they ran into people who knew about me thru social media and said, ” Oh, she’s the FUN Art lady”. I am ecstatic about having that identity.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://wwww.sandyfritz.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/sandyfunart
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/funartbysandy
• Other: https://sandyfunart.etsy.com