Creative Getaway By Abby Seeber

Sarah Bortz ‘21 was offered a dream internship with the FBI in the spring of 2020 only to have COVID- 19 shut down the government and her internship. Sarah was devastated. Instead of wasting her summer away, she decided to make good use of her time and start a business. In collaboration with her brother, Sarah started Double B’s Art Camp. 

“Sarah always has a vision. She knows exactly what is coming next,” says Associate Professor of Information and Decision Sciences, Coleen Wilder, who is Sarah’s faculty mentor. This mindset served Sarah well in planning a camp that would offer a real-world business experience for her while providing a service to the greater community. 

“I was looking to gain the beneficial life experience (of an internship),” Sarah says. Thus, she created her own art camp in the summer of 2019. The program had run with low enrollment and the siblings thought they had moved forward. With the loss of her dream internship, Sarah and her teenage brother, Brian, resurrected the program to be better than the year before. 

The program runs for a week at a time in the mornings with snack breaks amidst innovative art designs using unconventional styles. Third through fifth graders learn new projects every day, including bubble art on canvas, how to mix materials in a cohesive design, and even some abstract self-portraits. “We wanted to make a creative getaway amidst the pandemic,” Sarah says. 

Dr. Wilder has seen Sarah’s potential to innovate in the classroom. “She is a hard worker. She takes the lead in a lot of the group projects that we have. As that team leader, she is the one that is laying all the work out and organizing.” 

Sarah continues to serve as the leader of Double B’s Art Camp as she handles the business and logistics side-of-things. Given her experience in the classroom and now in the professional world, Sarah is prepared to take on the every next opportunity she can, including making her own. Sarah says, “I started my own business! Who else can put that on their résumé?”