Meet Amanda Fan | Owner and Creator of Boulder Colors

We had the good fortune of connecting with Amanda Fan and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Amanda, what’s the end goal, career-wise?
It’s always been community over competition for me. I started this little venture as I way to connect with my community and support the local farmers and I hope by the end, many more people far and wide will be creating their own eco-friendly pigments. You’ve heard of the Slow Food movement, and Slow Art is next. I hope to encourage people to think more about what goes into their art supplies not just in terms of ingredients, but the process behind it as well. While it might not sound too ambitious to say, ” I hope to put myself out of business by teaching everyone to do what I do,” sustainability will always be a priority over profitability.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
Making plant-based paint is the perfect intersection of all my interests: local food, fermentation, and color. While I still consider myself to be more of a mad scientist than an artist, I have come to embrace the title and found a welcome home in the artistic community. The creative life is more forgiving than any of my past professional experiences, and this venture has led to so many wonderful connections I’d never even dreamed of. From experience, my best advice is to show up for people and they will show up for you. Be generous with you knowledge and time when you can, and people will generally want to reciprocate that. Support your community and they will support you back, but be patient.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
Anyone who visits me gets the full vegan culinary tour of the area! We feast on Nice Cream Sammmies, follow Denver Vegan Van and Wong Way Veg to all their events, and brunch at City o’ City and Watercourse. In Longmont, I’ll take you on the Brew Hop to visit a few of the dozen breweries in town. And we can’t forget the farmer’s markets: come during market season and there’s at least one happening every day in the area. Markets are fun to taste test local products, grab some fresh flowers, and listen to live music while you eat lunch.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Shoutout to our amazing local farmers! They nourish our bodies with nutritious and delicious food, they steward the land and support out local ecosystems, and they constantly innovate with new techniques and changing harvests. As a certified brown thumb in the garden, I have nothing but respect and admiration for all the hard work and long hours they put into feeding our communities.

Catherine, John, and Felicity of Brown’s Farm have been overwhelmingly generous with their harvests and time, Mark and Tara of Esoterra Culinary have been major sources of knowledge and inspiration, and Hardy and the team at MetaCarbon provided us with amazing local colors all season long.

Website: bouldercolors.com

Instagram: instagram.com/bouldercolors