Costco Connection - December 2011

arts & entertainment
Puzzles & games

IMAGES COURTESY ARTWORKS WORLDWIDE

A perfect fit

Eric Dowdle has found success creating puzzles inspired by well-known cityscapes.

Puzzle creator urges families to
take another little piece of his art

By Teri Cettina

EVEN SOME OF the most plugged-in families go decidedly low-tech at this time of year. They sweep off the dining room table or set up a card table and pull out a long-standing holiday tradition: a family puzzle.

Jigsaw puzzles have been a fun and economical activity since they were first introduced in the mid-1700s. Puzzles hit their stride during the Great Depression, when advertisers gave them away as free premiums with products such as toothpaste. But their appeal endured for reasons that aren’t at all puzzling: They’re inexpensive, provide hours of focused activity for kids and adults alike, and can be downright addictive.

Many of the puzzles available at Costco this season feature beautiful and humorous scenes painted by artist Eric Dowdle. By the end of this year, Dowdle Puzzles will have sold 2 million of its trademark cityscapes and quirky folk-art scenes.

But creating puzzles was actually not Dowdle’s goal when he launched his career more than 20 years ago. This entrepreneurial artist started out painting custom portraits of historic homes in some of Boston’s wealthier neighborhoods.

The Costco Connection Look for the Dowdle Puzzles Special Event at most Costco warehouses from December 15 to January 8.

That venture was so successful that Dowdle continued painting home portraits after he subsequently moved to Utah.

Then Dowdle added a twist: Inspired by his own country upbringing (“My parents were practically Amish in the way they lived,” he recalls) and Utah’s community-centric feel, he experimented with painting home portraits in a traditional, Americana folk-art style. This whimsical, nostalgic approach was an instant hit, and Dowdle saw the pieces of his business start to come together.

Before long, he got larger commissions
painting entire city scenes. He happily spent
weeks researching the history of places
such as Seattle, Chicago and Puerto
Vallarta. Along with the city’s visual
landmarks (such as Seattle’s Space
Needle or Chicago’s Wrigley
Field), Dowdle began adding
historic references, cultural
tidbits and faces of local
celebrities to his paintings.
According to Dowdle Puzzles
director of sales Wendy Hemingway,

“These fun ‘hidden pictures’ in his paintings, along with his colorful and detailed style, made Eric’s paintings and prints immediately popular. Before long, it occurred to Eric that these paintings would make ideal puzzles— and a new arm of his business was launched.” Hemingway worked to place Dowdle’s puzzles in a wide range of shops—large retailers, craft and hobby stores, toy stores, souvenir stands, even hospital gift shops.

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“These fun ‘hidden pictures’ in his paintings,

Becoming a puzzle maker and Costco supplier has challenged Dowdle to think like a major business owner rather than an artist only. For a short while, for instance, he worked with a puzzle fabricator overseas. But during one factory visit, the artist noticed random puzzle pieces scattered on the floor. When he mentioned it, the factory representative reassured him that only 1 percent of the puzzles ended up with missing pieces. Dowdle was flabbergasted. “I don’t miss a piece when I’m painting, and no puzzle should ever miss a single piece,” he says.

To ensure quality control, he ended up bringing his puzzle production business back to the United States. He also instituted a strict replacement policy: If a customer’s puzzle is missing a piece, the customer gets a brand-new puzzle—no questions asked.

Dowdle now lives in a rural home in Lindon, Utah; his 13 peacocks and 200 chickens were audible in the background when The Connection interviewed him by phone. In their country-inspired home, Dowdle, his wife and their five kids often gather to do one of his puzzles. Dowdle relishes the idea that his family is not texting, tweeting or posting on each other’s Facebook walls during that time: They’re just focused on the simple, age-old activity of puzzle-solving.

But what Dowdle enjoys most of all about those moments: “My kids let down their guard and talk to me when we’re sitting shoulder to shoulder, working on a puzzle,” he says. “They tell me things about school, their friends and what’s going on in their lives that they might not otherwise. Who would’ve thought something as basic as a puzzle could do all that?” C