Dylan Dowdy & Pamela Dowdy shared their story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below.
Hi Dylan & Pamela , thank you so much for joining us today. We’re thrilled to learn more about your journey, values and what you are currently working on. Let’s start with an ice breaker: What makes you lose track of time—and find yourself again?
Life gets loud. Between running a small business, raising kids, and juggling the everyday chaos, it can feel like there’s never a spare minute to create or think. But there are some nights, after the kids are finally asleep, we find our little pocket of calm on our back patio by the fire pit.
We play a quick card game, swap stories, complain about sports schedules, and laugh at our own dumb jokes. Somewhere between all that, one of us will grab the sketchpad and start to doodle. This is where our best ideas can sneak up on us.
Sometimes it’s just a goofy little music monster. Sometimes it’s a scribble that turns into a store display idea. Most times it’s complete nonsense. We don’t edit or overthink, just throw it on paper and keep talking. Most of it looks ridiculous in the moment. But a day or a week later, we’ll flip back through those messy scraps and suddenly see the start of something fun worth making for the shop.
It’s in this space where time, deadlines and pressures are non-existent that we find our core selves and new ideas are able to strike.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
Dowdy Studio is our small artsy retail and gift shop featuring designs created by our own hands and brains. Our small bright yellow storefront is located on the East side of Dallas, TX. We think of our business as more than just a lil’ shop, but an extension of our weird creative vision in a space we get to share with cool folks.
Our artwork has always dabbled in the optimistically weird, with a dash of good/bad humor and a splash of our local culture. Same was true when we started Dowdy Studio in 2008, selling in a booth at local art markets. Our unique screen printed tees had people coming back for more. Eventually, we did so many markets and events that we decided to make a mobile store on wheels. After years of rolling around town and the nation in our mobile shop, we settled down in East Dallas in a little storefront off Garland and Peavy road, nestled among other amazing small business friends.
We still pour our hearts into art and design, making unique, high-quality products. Over the years, we’ve dreamed up everything from cat’s employed by pirates and a hip yeti covered in tats sipping his morning coffee to a pack of reverse mermaids just playing around and a space raptor being ridden into the universe. We look forward to making more fun things that bring on the smiles.
Great, so let’s dive into your journey a bit more. What did you believe about yourself as a child that you no longer believe?
As kids growing up we couldn’t fathom how to accomplish our big dreams. They seem unattainable, and you feel so small compared to your big adult dreams. We’d say the same was true when we started Dowdy Studio.
We were in our early 20s. We both loved drawing, painting, printing, sewing and making all kinds of things. We both dreamed of doing something bigger than our sketchbooks one day. I, Pamela, wanted to own an art gallery/store where I showcased my finest paintings and crafts, and Dylan wanted to build a mobile art store filled with his creations to sell all over the US map.
Through the years, we just kept running head first into our dreams. We realized you don’t need to be big to build something. You just need a goal and the fearless determination to take the next small step, and the one after that.
Now we’ve built a whole fun store out of our artwork, grit, and let’s just try it and see what happens. Looking back, I’d love to show our younger selves what we’ve done and say to them to keep following the dream.
Was there ever a time you almost gave up?
Ohh sure! Tons of times. But the problem with us, is when life throws the punches at us, it kinda charges up our creative battery and we go into problem-solving out-of-the-box mode.
When Dylan lost his job one week before our wedding, we enjoyed our honeymoon, then threw ourselves into building and opening his dream, the Dowdy Studio Wagon, our mobile storefront. It was tough for sure, money was tight, but we didn’t let giving up become an option.
Many years later, I left my long-term corporate comfy job to chase Dowdy Studio full-time, and, SMACK, the pandemic let loose. Our store had to temporarily close, people we’re trying to figure out how to social distance and stay safe. It was a very confusing time. We decided to not cry inside our studio, but turn our studio into a giant vending machine, walk-up, fresh air shopping experience. This gave us the opportunity to renovate the interior and repaint some old murals, plus hang out with our kiddos while they were little boops.
So, no we didn’t give up. We maybe wanted to, but that thought was fleeting when we realized there was opportunity to punch back and get creative.
I think our readers would appreciate hearing more about your values and what you think matters in life and career, etc. So our next question is along those lines. What’s a belief or project you’re committed to, no matter how long it takes?
We have a simple belief that if you’re doing what you love, with the people you love, there’s no real limit to what you can do.
Timelines and deadlines matter when we’re working on specific projects, but the heart of our business has never followed a timeline. Dowdy Studio is one long passion project. We love to push ourselves to make new art, new goods, and new ways of thinking creatively to share our art with everyone.
Thank you so much for all of your openness so far. Maybe we can close with a future oriented question. What is the story you hope people tell about you when you’re gone?
We really hope they tell the story of our unhinged We Ride at Night design. It features an opossum on a bike, with a Swiss cheese bikini, snacking on a trash fish and beans spilling everywhere while burping. This is one of our favorite designs because opossums are like natures free night kittens. We’ve screenprinted it on tees, made pins, beach towels, hoodies, hats and so much more. The story behind this design has to do with us, well our dog, catching a baby opossum one evening. Be brought us this drool-drenched dead-looking mess. We didn’t even recognize what it was. After an investigation we saw it was a little baby opossum. We dried him off, gave him trash snacks (leftovers from our dinner) and put him in a cardbord box so he could rest up and rejoin his night adventures. By morning he was gone, so we included then phrase “be gonish by dawnish” on the tee. The moral of the story is life a wild life but also take good care of your nature friends.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://dowdystudio.com
- Instagram: @dowdystudio
- Twitter: @dowdystudio
- Facebook: @thedowdystudio
- Other: TikTok; @dowdystudio
Image Credits
Pamela Dowdy
