Painter and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo professor Sara Frantz talks about :

Photographing the landscape in Texas and in Iceland, and surprisingly what they have in common; her unusual marriage-divorce-remarriage scenario that coincided with her getting a teaching job at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo; how she’s juggling motherhood (with a toddler and baby on the way shortly) in relation to the studio, and navigating doing schematics for her future work while keeping it fresh and not overly tight; the various ‘sketchy’ things she’s been told, as a woman and an artist, including that you shouldn’t have kids if you want to be taken seriously/have a real career…a male professor even told her she shouldn’t wear makeup for her oral review presentation; she also worried about becoming too visibly pregnant would scare away potential gallery relationships; how the painter Alice Neel was the example of the artist who was an absent parent; what it meant to her, and to her parents, when she came home with her first tattoo; and she talks about the kinds of students in grad school (at U. Texas) who didn’t pass their orals, and the kinds – like her – who did, because they had the grit that it takes to be an artist. .