Sam Collett
Artist, owned by dogs. General canine enthusiast, animal lover, tattooed music geek, riot grrrl, horror fan, book addict and nerdly gamer.
Old enough to know better. Does not know better.
Meet the ‘weasel
Ok, so a bit about me. My wife, Luce, and I live in North Shropshire with Lola the Dog. I love animals in general and dogs in particular. We have re-homed many over the years, including several ‘oldies’ and I’m a keen supporter of various dog rescues and welfare charities.
I grew up in London and studied at the Central School of Art and Design, which has since become Central St Martins. After that I spent a fun few years managing record shops in the late 1980s. I always wanted to get back to being artistic for a living but awful grown up stuff happened and I found myself with a career in sales and marketing.
Some years later I started sketching and sculpting again while I was stuck at home recovering from a nasty car accident. I did a bit of freelance illustration work and thought about setting up a business doing pet portraits or something else that would involve my love of dogs. I made a ‘Basset Fairy Princess’ Christmas ornament for a friend and shared photos on Facebook. All of a sudden everybody wanted their own ‘tiny dog’ and things took off from there. In fact things went a bit berserk and I spent the first year or so setting up a business rather more quickly than I planned!
People always ask about the business name and the logo. The logo model is our much missed old girl Sandie, who joined us for her retirement in 2008. We went to our local Dogs Trust centre looking for a male puppy friend for our terrier girl, Etty and came home with a 14-year-old Labrador in the car. We got a ‘buy one get one free’ deal with the puppy. These things happen to us a lot. My business name is harder to explain. The ‘pooch’ bit is obvious but I have no idea where the ‘weasel’ came from. There was wine and it all made sense at the time.
What I Do
I’ve built up my portfolio of polymer clay tiny dog sculptures with a mix of custom commissions and quirky things from my own imagination. Unfortunately, I have a chronic spinal condition which has really slowed me down recently and stopped me being able to do much sculpture or commit to commissioned work. My focus has been on staying creative, mainly sketching and drawing.
I’ve been forced to admit ‘semi retirement’, but I’m adapting the way I work and I still have plenty of plans for the future. I’ve started a ‘100 Women in Music’ drawing challenge which may turn into a bigger project. I would also like expand on some of the quirkier stuff I make, like my Steampunk and ‘Myth and Magic’ models, with a view to printing mugs, t shirts and other fun stuff featuring my tiny dog characters. In the longer term I’m thinking about crowd-funding some of the more ambitious projects I’ve been keeping on a back burner, such as stop-frame animations and maybe even a book!
Meet the ‘weasel’s dog
Lola the Dog
I am Lola, also known as Tank. I am a dog.
I like bol. Throw bol now?