Andy and Cynthia Lenz, both with B.A. degrees in Art, founded Lenz Arts on August 1, 1968, since they couldn't find all the supplies they wanted in Santa Cruz. A retail store front of 900 square feet (including loft) was opened March 1, 1969 on Pacific Avenue near the head of the Pacific Garden Mall.

On July 1, 1972, Lenz Arts made a needed move to its current location (10,000 square feet) at 142 River Street into what was a cold-storage facility constructed prior to household freezers became commonplace.

Lenz Arts was incorporated in 1976. In 1979 Andrew Jr., at age 12, cut his first picture framing mats.

Andrew Jr. was promoted to Manager in 1989. In the fall of 1991, a warehouse was added to hold our many thousands of feet of picture frame moulding and the saws required to cut it.

Since then, we've remodelled a few times, moved displays and deparments around, added product lines, good stuff like that.

Lenz Arts remains a very family oriented business, with Andy, Cynthia, Andrew, Matthew Lenz and a daughter-in-law involved on a day to day basis along with more than a dozen staff members. We all look forward to serving you!

Andy Lenz answering questions at a demonstration in Spring of 2005.

We were shut down by a two alarm fire on March 16th, 2002, but we were back at it after two weeks of some very hard work!