Helping You Wear Your Heart on Your Sleeve : Retailing: At the Bydee Art & Gift Shop, the T-shirts and other merchandise feature more than the usual trendy slogans--they’re a prescription for peace.

SANTA MONICA — Everyone talks urban Angst but no one seems to do anything about it. Until now.

Windgrove Daniel, an Inglewood cardiologist, thinks he has found the salve for those frustrated by ethnic tensions, shaken by urban unrest and wounded by economic woes. Meet the Bydee man, a faceless figure topped with a bowler hat.

Actually, it isn’t just a man--it’s a philosophy. Bydee stands for Bringing You Delightful and Enlightening Experiences, a phrase born of a series of characters created by Brian Joseph, a high school friend of Daniel. Hoping to promote a business as well as a philosophy, Daniel last fall opened the Bydee Art & Gifts shop in Santa Monica. The store is filled with Bydee characters, who appear as children and women as well as men, in original art and on items including T-shirts, prints, tote bags, directors chairs, greeting cards and even as the base for a glass-top table.

Joseph created the Bydee character in 1986, while he was an administrator for the city of Austin, Tex.

“Our philosophy is to make people happy by promoting peace, love and happiness,” Joseph said.

The point, Daniel said, is to show that there is more to be gained from business than what’s found on the profit-and-loss statement.

“So often in life we need symbols to latch onto. They can be positive or negative,” Daniel said. “Once you know the message and concepts behind these pictures, you can get something positive.”

Daniel has tried to turn the store into a total Bydee experience. Reggae and Caribbean music plays constantly. Bydees romp on colorful T-shirts and sweat shirts with poetry on the back that Joseph writes to provide positive messages. One shirt shows multihued Bydee people embracing in a kind of group dance above the words “Community In Unity.” On the back, the poem reads:

Community In Unity

Answers the call.

And lays the foundation

To build self-esteem in all.

Other shirts preach multiculturalism and family values.

But entering the world of Bydee is not cheap. Prices range from $11.95 for a Bydee coloring book to $45 for a sweat shirt to $1,500 for an original framed and signed Bydee.

Joseph says his art is inspired by a youth spent in Trinidad, particularly among the pageantry of the island’s Carnival. “I saw lots of color and costume-making. I think those images, plus some I saw in Africa, stayed with me.”

Joseph is as positive as his figures. He decided to become an artist after earning a degree in urban studies and realizing he was not happy with his work. He drew his first painting on a Wednesday and bought space to appear in a show the following Saturday.

The Bydee name and philosophy, he said, “just came out” when someone asked about the funny-looking characters he had drawn. Once named, Joseph began having private showings of his work and soon saw the value in merchandising Bydees.

He now has stores in Austin and Dallas and plans to open stores in Seattle and Atlanta. Bydee also gets frequent national television exposure. In January, a character on “Melrose Place” wore one of Joseph’s T-shirts, and a print continues to hang on her apartment wall.

Also in the works is a Bydee Man book. “It will be set in Tobago and somewhat based on my early life,” Joseph said. “Tourists will come to the island with all sorts of troubles, and the Bydee people will share their philosophy to help them.”

Joseph likes to emphasize the therapeutic benefits of Bydee-ism. He has used the art to help mental health organizations and rape crisis centers, he said. Many of his clients are teachers, and he has worked with schools in Texas.

“I do murals with the Bydee characters inside the schools. The kids get involved and develop their own stories and characters,” Joseph said.

In fact, Joseph now spends more time giving presentations than painting.

As a physician, Daniel finds the art soothing as well. “My work involves dealing with the twilight of people’s lives, when they have to make difficult decisions,” he said. “This store allows me to focus on positives. The work is a springboard to positive discussions, and they spread a message of happiness and mutual respect.”