Pawcasso Art Studio and Pet Boutique: A Unique Brand of Pet Care

Pawcasso Art Studio and Pet Boutique blends art, animals and community in a space designed for all ages — offering paint and sip nights, youth art camps and handpicked pet products. A portion of proceeds supports animal rescue and rehabilitation efforts worldwide. Co-founder Barbara Martorelli shares how she and her husband brought the idea to life, what drives their mission and what’s next for the studio.

What is Pawcasso Art Studio? What do you do?

Pawcasso  is both an art studio and pet store. We’re a pet friendly art studio also, and it’s run by my husband Ron and I. The things that we’re known for are our pet treats. We make homemade, single ingredient pet treats. They’re in about 20 stores throughout Long Island, the city and Connecticut, so that’s probably what most people come in for at our store. And then the other thing is the paw print and the lick painting. People bring their dogs into us, and we give them a little paw print, and then we help them turn them into flowers, or we do the lick paint, which is like, you put peanut butter on a plastic bag, and the dogs like, spread the paint around as they lick peanut butter. So that’s probably the two things that we’re best known for. We’re a small pet boutique. So we don’t have dog food or anything like that. Our appeal is that we are small and that we do those types of things.

This is a very unique sort of thing. So what was the inspiration for this?

So originally, my husband is a graphic designer, and on the side, he was making pet mats and pet bowls. He was designing cool graphics. And we decided to open a pet store and to feature some of his stuff. We opened the pet store. People started to meet Ron, and they found out he was an artist. And then people started to ask, ‘Hey, can you help me paint?’ Or, ‘Can you paint my pet?’ It just grew from there. It was like 2016 we opened and paint and sips were getting popular, so we kind of based it on that. Now we do everything, but that’s what we started off with – an animal themed small art studio, and then it just kept growing.

What are the clientele like for a business like this?

It’s just amazing how well those two things go together. We never realized so many other people would love it. People come in and they always tell us, it’s an experience in our store. So again, we’re small but they come in and it’s like, all cool art everywhere, and it’s colorful and it’s bright. And sometimes we have kids doing art classes, and people coming in to shop with their dogs, and the kids are petting the dogs. It’s cool how it just meshed together.

Paint and Sips are very popular these days – do you do those?

We do the normal paint and sips also, yeah. One of the biggest things, though, is that people can, if they want, bring their dogs. So sometimes, like, we have a bachelor party coming up that there’s going to be no dogs there, but then, there’ll be a family that’ll come over the summer, and they will ask if they could bring that dog to paint, and the dogs will just sit there that play with my dogs and the kids. But yes, we are a dog friendly art studio, but it’s not just about dogs. You could do regular art, too.

Do you have any special summer events planned?

We do everything. We do camps. We have kids’ mini camps, and then we have the paint and sips and all that stuff. But in the summer, the kids mini camps are probably the most popular. We do drop-ins so people don’t have to make a reservation. And again, what people love is, the kids are there. So then when the dogs come in, the kids are playing with the dogs, and the dogs are loving it. And the kids even sometimes help us pack our treats, because they love the Pawcasso treats. So they help us pack the treats into the bag. I have cute little pictures of kids weighing the bags and finding out how to read a scale and stuff like that. So it just all works together. I don’t know how, and I don’t know if it’s a concept that we would have ever been able to sell to anybody, but now that we have it, you know, people ask us all the time, are we ever going to franchise? And there is someone in Florida that is interested in possibly opening one in Florida, in the Boynton area.

As far as summer events go, we’re going to be at the Pickles and Paws event in Yaphank. But we’re actually expanding the art studio We’ll have an occupational therapist, and we’re doing crochet and stuff like that.

Finally, tell me about your dog treats!

Our dog treats are what, again, is what brings everybody in. We keep dog treat samples outside all the time, but we make that single ingredient. So it’s like 100% chicken breast, 100% beef, 100% venison. Veggie treats are all veggies. So people just love it because it’s healthy. That’s really what started it. I had a Great Dane, and I read a lot about nutrition with the Great Danes, you have to be very careful. And so that’s what got me into the cooking aspect of making my own treats. And I would give them out to people at the store, and then people would start asking me if they could buy it. People came in and started asking for that dog’s crack, which is how we got the name, called Pawcasso crackers. People would literally come in all the time asking us for that dog’s crack. So we changed the name to crackers.

Pawcasso Art Studio and Pets Boutique is located at 3 Sunset Avenue in Westhampton Beach and can be reached at 631-887-6705 or pawcassowhb.com.