We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Drew Scott. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Drew below.
Drew, appreciate you making time for us and sharing your wisdom with the community. So many of us go through similar pain points throughout our journeys and so hearing about how others overcame obstacles can be helpful. One of those struggles is keeping creativity alive despite all the stresses, challenges and problems we might be dealing with. How do you keep your creativity alive?
Creativity to me is joy and my intention is to share that joy in everything I create. My creative journey started with crayon drawings on the walls of my room at the age of 2 when I told my mom, “I am an artist. I make beautiful things.” I started designing jewelry at 9 and fell in love with gemstones: the beauty, the ancient history, and the energetic properties. My first jewelry business started at the age of 10, I had friends at an after-school daycare in an assembly line making friendship bracelets that I sold at recess. From the playground to women’s business networking events, I found mentors in the jeweler community in Houston, TX who supported me in the development of my skills and business. College (I’m a Harvard pre-med Neurobiology graduate) and a corporate career in entertainment in Los Angeles, made me forget the artist I once was until the Pandemic slowed everything down and put life on hold.
It was a challenge to rediscover my creativity as an adult. Though I have 20 years of experience designing and hand-fabricating jewelry, it took encouragement from my support system of family and friends to return to my creative life. The artistic skills I developed from classes, mentors, and self-taught all returned, but the courage to take risks was missing because of my fear of failure. I had to reframe failure, which I now call “experiments,” and accept that not achieving a desired outcome is part of the creative process. Once I allowed myself to play with my creativity as I did in my youth, I found joy again which sprang into creative entrepreneurship. To keep my creativity alive, if I ever feel the lack of spark, I create something without expectations just for myself, and generally in the freedom of expression the creativity essence returns.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I have always found that art gives meaning to my life whether consuming it, creating it, or sharing it by inspiring a sense of “Someone understands.” I am a multidisciplinary artist building a career across the visual arts spectrum and my current creative expression is my jewelry brand, dos22. D.O.S. are my initials and 2022 is the year I started betting on myself as an artist. Altogether, we have dos22 or 222. I started the brand on the foundation of my creative values: be one-of-a-kind (each piece is one of one), be intentional (hand-crafted), be sustainable (created in small-batch drops), and be colorful (live like you know how to use all the colors in the crayon box). Creating art with my hands and working with the energy of gemstones has always given me a sense of elation, and I intend to inspire people to discover their creative spark.
My first creative love is painting and I incorporate that love into dos22 with every piece of packaging for my jewelry having a hand-painted element. I am currently experimenting with a line of jewelry where painting takes center stage and launching the collection this Spring.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Quality number one is courage. Having the courage to move toward becoming who I am as an artist was a pivotal moment that changed my life. Courage is built gradually over time by taking small steps outside of your comfort zone so that when that moment comes when you need to take a leap of faith to rise to the next level of your journey, you’re ready to flex the courage muscles you have been building.
Quality number two is having a growth mindset. I teach youth jewelry metalsmithing at The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, The Glassell Junior School. However, I too am a student of my craft and always will be. It is a blessing to learn something new and the internet makes it so unbelievably easy to learn a new skill with so many amazing people sharing their knowledge for free. It takes a growth mindset to want to learn and the discipline to stay committed to learning that skill.
Quality number three: Parts 1 and 2 are not letting the opinions of others distract you from what you know is right for you, and imposter syndrome is a waste of time. They both go hand in hand, you feel like an imposter because you are comparing yourself to other people and imagining the worst-case scenario of what they think about you. In one of my professional experiences where I was the youngest member of a seasoned team, I felt like a fraud. I looked around at my peers and had the profound realization that they, too, didn’t exactly know what they were doing and were doing the best to their abilities with what they had available to them. The same people who you think are thinking you’re a fraud, are probably not thinking about you at all. And if they are thinking about you, it’s for a fraction of the time you are worrying about their perception of you. Personally, releasing my need for validation that was tied to imposter syndrome has freed me to grow and thrive without the dead weight of worrying about what people think.
What has been your biggest area of growth or improvement in the past 12 months?
Personal growth to me is paramount to the growth of your business or career. I am a recovering perfectionist and the past year of entrepreneurship has been challenging for me to release control and find partners I trust to collaborate with. I am a firm believer that it is unwise to be the smartest person in a room, which means surrounding yourself with people with more knowledge and experience than you so that you can learn from your peers. I am currently a one-woman show with occasional assistance; however, I know that to take my business and career to the next level I need to call in partnerships. I am excited by what’s possible when people come together to create something beautiful.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.dos-22.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dos22isonline/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y%3D
Image Credits
Drew Scott
