He didn’t know how he knew, he just knew. And when he walked in, what he saw hit him like a ton of bricks.

When Dan told me his story of the Vatican, an abandoned legal career, and a very heartwarming conversation with his mother, I knew I had to have him share it with you.

Dan is an inspiring artist and curator. He supports artists and the arts with his annual Enchanted Brush show. But more than that, he’s one of the most confident, straight-shooting artists I’ve ever met. He does all this in a way that invites you in. When you listen, you’ll believe that you could have just this experience and may be inspired to start to notice where your next life turn will be.

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Watch the episode here

Listen to the episode here

This One Time At The Vatican: A Life-Changing Encounter With Renaissance Art Featuring Dan Chuszinski

Introduction And Overview Of The Enchanted Brush Exhibition

Welcome to the show. I’m your host Marc Scheff and this conversation is a banger. I’m friends with this guy, Dan Chudzinski. We know each other from the art world. He’s an incredible sculptor. He is a museum curator. He runs a program and an annual art show over at the museum. He has some awesome interesting information about that.

We were talking the other day and he told me this story about how he essentially got into art from a completely different path. I had no idea. His dad was a lawyer and he was going to be a lawyer. He was on that path. He grew up in the Midwest, there were no artists around him, he didn’t have this path laid out, and he didn’t know that people did this for a living, but he had this one experience that I’m going to say is borderline mystical.

When he told me this story, I knew we had to have him back on the show because he’s filled with these stories. I said, “You have to come tell this story on the show. People have to hear this and have to understand what exactly it was that you learned, and how this experience changed your life because it was a 360 or a 180. It was a lot of turns.” Have a listen and I’ll see you on the other side.

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I am so glad to be here with Dan Chudzinski. Dan, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me.

We’ve known each other a while now through the art community and some of the events. I’ve been a big fan of your work. I’ve had the honor and pleasure of participating in the show that you curate every year. Can you tell us a little bit about that show and what you do now?

In addition to working as a studio artist who focuses primarily on imaginative realism and hyper-realistic sculptures, my day job where I currently am right now is serving as the Director of Curation and Exhibitions at the Mazza Museum at the University of Findlay. The Mazza Museum has the world’s first and largest collection of original art from picture books. The show that you were mentioning is one that I started before I took this job. It’s called the Enchanted Brush Exhibition.

For that show, I call on my friends in the artistic community, such as yourself, to create an original work of art that we then put on display. The deal is that if a work of art sells, 100% of the commission goes directly to the artist. As far as I know, that’s the only gallery show in the world that does that. It’s my way of saying thank you to those artists for taking time out of their busy schedules to bring their art and to share their art with Findlay, Ohio.

It’s so wonderful that you do that. I don’t know anybody else in the world who does that. At the gallery that I run, we do a nice 75% commission, but I’ve never heard of 100%. In our previous conversations over the years, one thing that impressed me about you is how deep your knowledge is of art history and techniques. You’ve told me so many stories. Unfortunately, we can’t tell all of them here. At some point, we’ll have to get to Michelangelo being on the run during the painting of the Sistine Chapel, but that’s for another day.

Dan’s Initial Career Path And Family Influence

What was fascinating to me is that’s not what you always did. When you were in high school and when you went off to school, that wasn’t your trajectory. I’m always fascinated to hear about these right turns in people’s lives. I’m going to hand it to you. I know that I’ve prefaced this already in the intro and people are excited to hear this story, but I want to hear this almost magical story of transformation. Where were you when you were going into this story? What did you think your reality look like for the future?

From an early age, I knew I always wanted to be an artist and I loved art. I grew up in Fremont, Ohio, a small town of 16,000 people. I didn’t know any professional artists until I was in college. When I say professional, I’m talking about people who make most of their income working as an artist. I didn’t have any artists in the family. My family was always supportive. At the time I was in my junior year of college, I was studying art, but I was mostly studying history in preparation for law school.

Your dad was a lawyer if I’m not mistaken.

He still is a lawyer. I always saw the enthusiasm he had for his work. Growing up in a small town, people would pull me aside and they would tell me stories about things my dad did for them when they couldn’t afford to hire him. He would work out a deal where they could pay him in crops. I thought that was pretty admirable. I could see how he was helping people.

Transformational Experience In Rome

I still have a great relationship with my parents. I thought it wouldn’t be a bad thing to go into that line of work. I had thought at the time that I was probably going to be doing some law related to museums and art, but it wasn’t on my trajectory that I would ever become a director of curation. At the time, I didn’t know a path to become a professional artist.

That all changed during the spring break of my junior year. There were only a few weeks left in the semester. I got a call from a childhood friend of mine named Madeline. We had grown up together, and she was studying at the American University of Rome. She had invited me and another friend to go out to Rome and visit her. It’s not your typical spring break. We were headed to the Vatican instead of the beach. For me, I was excited to be there because one of my most artistic heroes from the Renaissance is represented there.

You were a big history buff and you knew it while you were studying it in school if I’m not mistaken. Here’s an opportunity for you to step into that. You went on this trip. You were looking to have a career as a lawyer following in the footsteps of your dad. The other thing that I heard you say is that your dad also gave back. He made deals with people. He used his position in whatever way he could to help people in the ways that he thought they needed. As we discussed, you have this show, and that’s the only one I know of that gives all the money to the artists. It sounds like even in your own way, that was a huge influence.

Somewhere along the line, I realized that money wasn’t a great motivator for me. It’s important to be able to pay the bills and to be able to support people. I was more interested in what you could do with the skillset at hand. I remember going on that trip when Madeline first invited me to come to Rome. I’m almost embarrassed to say this now because Rome was so transformational. Rome wasn’t even on my radar at that point in my life as a place to visit.

I realized that money wasn’t a great motivator for me, you know, it’s important to be able to pay the bills and to be able to support people but I was more interested in you know, what you could do with the skill set at hand.

I thought about it like, “Are we really buying tickets?” I remember we bought our tickets way before in November to force ourselves to commit to visiting her. I had never traveled that far away from home. We got to Rome and I was going to spend ten days there. It turned out to be ten days that changed the trajectory of my life. What happened was Madeline was dating a Swiss Guard at the time. The Swiss Guard are the Pope’s bodyguards.

Your friend Madeline is living in Rome.

She’s living in Rome. She’s studying at the American University.

That’s how she’s dating somebody who’s working there. Rome wasn’t on your radar. As an art historian or as somebody who was studying this, what was on your radar? Where did you think you’d rather have been?

I always had an affinity for Renaissance artists. Florence is where that happened, which is not far from Rome. It’s a completely different culture. Florence was a small republic at that time. The Medici were running things behind the scenes, the art patrons. Rome was the power of this big empire, the head of the Papal States and the Vatican. The artists worked back and forth. I knew that at some point, I’d get over there. I wasn’t just thinking that soon in my life.

We went to Rome. She said, “Is there anything you want to see at the Vatican Museums?” At the Vatican Museums at that time, it was said that less than 1% of their holdings were on display. They said if you were to spend a minute in front of everything they had out, it would take you twelve years to go through. Just know that before you go in. I said, “I want to see the Sistine Chapel as number one. I want to see Michelangelo’s Pietà. Michelangelo always was and still is a huge influence on me. I have to say that I knew that name first as a Ninja Turtle, as a reptile, long before I knew him as a Renaissance master.

Most of us were introduced to art history through the Ninja Turtles probably.

Encounter With Michelangelo’s Work At The Sistine Chapel

I still have a passion for the Renaissance artists and the Ninja Turtles. That hasn’t changed. What happened that day was we scheduled a tour for a time when the public wasn’t going to be there yet. It was the middle of the week, like first thing in the morning. They told me before we walked in, “This is going to be hard for you because we’re going to run to the chapel first, which is the last thing that you see. We’re going to go there so that you have the most time before the crowds come in. You’re going to work your way backward through the museum.”

I remember being dragged through the Vatican because I kept stopping in front of these works that I’d wanted to see my whole life. They would yank me by the arm or by the collar around a corner. There was a lot of buildup. I remember walking down this back spiral staircase and I stopped. They looked back and said, “What’s going on?” I said, “It’s on the other side of this wall, isn’t it?” They said, “How do you know that? Have you been here?” I said, “I just know it’s right there.” We came down the steps.

I remember letting two of my friends there with me to walk in first. I walked in last and I took one glimpse. I can tell you the exact details that I saw. I gasped like I had just jumped into cold water. I remember tearing up immediately, but I wasn’t ready for that response. I’d never had art hit me quite that hard. I stepped out of the room. I don’t even know if I had both feet in the room when that happened. I thought at the time that maybe I was having a panic attack, but I’ve never in my life had a panic attack, then or now. I couldn’t describe it.

And I walked in last and I took one Glimpse I like kind of gasped like I just jumped into cold water and I remember like tearing up immediately, but I wasn’t ready for that response. I never had our hit me quite that hard.

I would later learn that is something called a synesthetic response. It happens in people where they can taste, hear, or smell color. It’s like your senses go into overload. I was completely immersed in that level of art. The floor, the walls, and everything was covered. It was like there was no visual escape from it until I walked out into the hallway. I remember catching my breath. Fortunately, I don’t know if any of them realized what happened to me because they didn’t say anything.

I walked in and the next 30 minutes went by. It might as well have been seconds, but it was so much better than I could anticipate. We could tell that crowds were going to be coming. You could hear them. They said, “Do you want to see the School of Athens?” I started walking. I knew where it was. I don’t know to this day how I knew, but I walked out. The School of Athens was painted by Raphael. That’s a painting done in the papal apartments by Raphael when he was nineteen. It was his first major Vatican commission. 

Influence Of Renaissance Artists And Decision To Pursue Art

I’m standing alone in front of it. I was so close. I could have touched it. I could have licked it. There was nobody in the room. I wasn’t about to do those things, but I do remember getting so close. My nose was about 2 inches off of it. When you see it that close, you can see little corrections that he made when he was painting, little imperfections that never show up even in a high-resolution photo. It dawned on me at that moment for the first time in my life that he was real. If he was real, he was painting this while Michelangelo was next door. He even painted Michelangelo in it as an afterthought.

Studying Art History

At the time, I was probably twenty. I thought Raphael was my age when he painted this. I think he did this without photography. He had to make his own paints and brushes. He didn’t have a digital like an opaque projector. He didn’t even have artificial light. I remember when I got to the point where I realized he painted that in natural lighting, I thought, “What is my excuse if he had done this 500 years ago?” I couldn’t come up with an excuse. I knew right then that I wasn’t going to be a lawyer. Whatever had happened to me, I wanted to create things that were going to do that to other people. I might only get the chance to make one in my life, but it still seemed like that was the path I wanted.

I was talking with some clients and some other coaches. I was talking to another coach about some of the training that they might want to do. We were talking about how there are all kinds of different training that you can take if you want to go into leadership coaching and team coaching, like NLP, Enneagram, and all this stuff. She was trying to figure out which one to do. What it came down to was the experiences you’ve had that have touched you and made a difference for you. That’s a pretty good indicator of maybe the skill that you’ll want to learn so that you can provide that experience for other people.

There’s a thread there in your story around you having this deep, meaningful, and mystical experience, and realizing in the same way that your dad was able to take the thing that he loved doing and provide a service for people, make it accessible for people, give people whatever experience, maybe he had a great lawyer as a kid or something, but you’ve taken this experience and decided at this moment, “I’m going to dedicate my life to this.”

As we said before, you’re starting to provide as a curator of the museum, but certainly, the curator of this show, providing an experience for people to both create in this way and experience art in this way. There’s a beautiful message there about this thread of you always tuning into some way that you can build a skill around your passion to be of service.

From that day, the challenge became how you can make this vision a reality. I kept reminding myself through all of that, “What is your excuse?” My mantra became “Make art, not excuses.” Anytime I would think it was going to be hard, I reminded myself, “Make art. You’re not dealing with the bubonic plague. You’re not dealing with an invading army that is sacking Rome while you’re trying to paint. Make art.”

What is your excuse and then my Mantra really became make art not excuses.

Art As A Universal Language

I saw a lot of things that day that inspired me, but there was another one that jarred me. They had Bernini’s maquettes. Bernini was the greatest sculptor of the Baroque era without question. They had the clay models that he did for the big monuments, and his fingerprints were visible in the oil clay. To me, that was a revelation. That was the first time I truly realized these guys weren’t gods with mystical powers. They were human. He had used the clay that he got from the river outside. It was nothing special. He went down there and he turned dirt into this thing that became a masterpiece.

I love hearing this because I had a very similar experience. Not in any way this epic, but I feel I’ve heard this also from someone talking about seeing another artist’s work and realizing it. I just read maybe Alan Douglas. I had this realization too. I grew up looking at art, studying art history in high school and other times, and looking at all this art in books that I loved. I loved reading. I looked at them more in the books than I ever read them. I read a lot of the books. 

Almost 25 or 30 years later, meeting some of the people in person and seeing their work in person, I was going, “People do this. This is a thing that you could do.” Obviously, you’re not meeting Michelangelo, Donatello, Raphael, and the other turtles, but you’re experiencing their work in a way that makes you realize, “Make art, not excuses.” You’re twenty years old, he was nineteen years old. You also have all of these tools now in photography, projectors, and other ways of streamlining this work. I do want you to continue your story. We left off with a guy collecting mud down by the river and making timeless sculptures.

I saw the Bernini sculptures and realized that he had made them out of mud that he gathered from the banks of the Tiber. That was enough that day. That was one of the first days of the trip. I still look back on that trip, which was back in 2006. I talked to my friends who were on it. That period changed the trajectory of all three of our lives. We look back on that quite a bit. I remember coming home, and it was like the honeymoon was over. You’re leaving Rome. Now that you’re back to life, how are you going to apply what you learned? How are you going to bring that to Ohio?

My mom picked me up at the Detroit airport pretty late, so I caught a red-eye flight back. I remember it was 2:00 in the morning, and we had about an hour and a half drive to get home. After that long flight and that traveling, I was not as talkative as I would typically be. As we got on the highway, she said, “How was it?” I said, “It was life-changing,” and that was about all. She said, “Is that it?” I said, “I’m not going to be a lawyer,” and there was this pause that felt like forever, and then she started laughing.

At that moment, it felt a little bit like somebody laughing at a funeral. I misread it. I think she’s laughing because the thought of me being anything other than a lawyer must be so ridiculous to her. She says, “Your father always knew you were never going to be an attorney.” I said, “What?” In fairness, they never pressured me. They never said, “You’re going to do this.” They said, “If you are going to study art, we think you need to have a backup,” and history is a logical precursor to law school, so that’s why I was doing it.

Side note, I learned that the US News put out a report of the top ten least profitable college degrees. I am proud to say that I have two in the top five. One is a fine arts major and one is being a historian. I’ve had multiple good careers in both, so it depends on what you do with the training. My training made me uniquely adapt to take on the roles later in life as both a college professor and a museum curator, as well as a professional artist.

In that conversation with my mom, I remember her saying after that moment, “He knew you wouldn’t be a lawyer. He said you would be drawing people in court when you are supposed to be listening to their testimony.” I said, “He’s not wrong. That’s probably what I would have been doing.” She said, “We’re not artists. We don’t know any artists.” I said, “I know.” She said, “We support you, but this path is going to be a lot harder for you than if you had been a lawyer.”

It’s funny because I knew how hard it was to become a lawyer from what my dad would tell me about, passing the bar. I know the way he put himself through school. That was the first time I had anybody put it in those terms like, “It might be easier for you to become a lawyer than an artist.” I don’t think they were wrong.

Advice For Aspiring Artists

The next thing she said stuck with me because my mom was more direct than she can sometimes be. She said, “We didn’t raise a starving artist,” and that was her way of saying, “If you’re going to chase this, you better do it because we’ll support it, but you’re going to have to find the path.” The biggest lesson that I can condense all of that down into is that the path to becoming an artist, and anything, any niche profession, or anything you want to be successful is never a linear path.

Unfortunately, we don’t have time, so we’ll have to have you come back because I want to hear more about that. That’s a whole other episode, so I’m going to have you back for round two. What I also love about this story, and the reason I wanted you to come to tell this story is that it’s not linear, and also unexpected. Maybe you have an answer for this or maybe you don’t, but I am curious about who you were at that moment to have the presence of mind to say, “I’m going to take this other path.”

A lot of people might still feel a lot of pressure or resignation coming home and saying, “I’ll find a way to maybe do some more art than I thought I was going to do, but not certainly as a career.” It doesn’t necessarily have to be a lesson. What’s the mindset that you had then that allowed you to make that big decision? You make it sound like, “I’m not going to be a lawyer,” and your mom said you’re going to have to work for it and it’s okay. Still, there was a point where you made that decision.

This is to illustrate my mindset, but if you were to ask if I could only describe in one word what will be in my obituary, what would it be? It would be an artist. After that day, I could not envision myself doing anything else. It dawned on me. Deep down, I knew I was always going to try to be an artist. I just didn’t see a path. That day I thought I needed to make one because why not? I knew the stories of all of these guys, like Michelangelo and Raphael. Raphael’s father was a court painter at Urbino. He was groomed to be in a position to get that commission. 

Michelangelo wasn’t. He was nursed by a stonemason’s wife because his mother died when he was very young. Stonemasons were looked at as a very lowly profession. Da Vinci was a bastard. He was born out of wedlock. He showed aptitude early. That wasn’t the plan for him. Neither of those guys was meant to become what they did. They both had to fight for it. Michelangelo got his nose broken over it when he was twelve years old. His nose was flat for the rest of his life. That was a debate by art critics.

Was it? People who are complaining about their art critics now can take a seat.

He did ask for it though. He had it coming. What I realized on that day was the shift in mindset that art is no longer a hobby. That’s not going to be good enough. It is a lifestyle. How do you build the rest of your life around the pursuit of this thing? As an example, I knew I had to get back to Italy. I was back six months later.

The shift in mindset was that art is no longer just a hobby for me; it’s a lifestyle. So, how do I build the rest of my life around pursuing this passion? 

 

Shortly after that, I went back and did an apprenticeship as a marble carver in the same village where Michelangelo was trained. At the time, they had modern CNC machines that could carve something based on a model. I had no interest in learning it that way. I remember going into a museum and they were showing me the tools that Michelangelo would have used. I commissioned a blacksmith to recreate those tools for me. He did it in one night, and then I used those tools.

One of the ways I asked them to train me was by using natural light only. They said, “Nobody has asked us to do that ever.” I said, “I’m asking you. You guys are the best.” There was this bond immediately because they saw that I was all in. Working in marble and around a marble quarry is very dangerous. It’s not glamorous. It might seem glamorous, but it’s rough work, but I know I need to be in that place.

Maybe not glamorous, but there’s certainly this romantic idea. We have TV shows now where everyone on the CW had showers. They bathed and they’re doing blacksmithing or whatever. That’s obviously not how it was. This ties into something you said earlier. I feel like there’s maybe an expansion on this phrase, but you said you realized seeing that these guys were doing stuff at 19 or 20 years old to make art, not excuses. I feel like you’re taking that now into every step of this transformation into the artist and the curator that you are now at every stage.

We’re going to have to have you back on the show to talk more about this. What I see is that if there’s anything you want to learn, you want to learn it deeply. You’re all in. Whether the art is the physical art or the art of the business or the jobs that you’re trying to get, this idea of making your work and not making excuses, whether it’s the art or learning the skill, not trying to cut corners and say, “There’s this fast tool. Let me learn this fast tool.” We don’t even have to start on AI right now but you say, “I want to learn how to make these things,” so that you understand them as deeply as possible.

It’s about getting out of your comfort zone. I can think of fewer better ways to do it than moving to a place where you don’t speak the language at all. You don’t speak the dialect, and they don’t love outsiders. They are very particular about their art because the best artists in the world, at least the best marble carvers, were all living in that neighborhood. There were dues that had to be paid when I showed up. I earned a lot of respect by being the first and last person in the studio every day. They saw that. They would recommend a book and I would read it that night because I couldn’t go out and socialize. I didn’t know a lot of people. 

You didn’t speak the language. 

I got better at it. I could speak it at a conversational level by the time I left. Even so, a lot of my knowledge of Italian was these obscure sculpting terms that, outside of that circle, the average Italian is not going to understand what you’re talking about. I got to know Michelangelo so well that at one point, I knew what was going on in his life 500 years before better than I knew what was happening with any of my friends, in some cases even my immediate family. That’s not for everybody. The internet was very restricted back then. We couldn’t do a Zoom call. It’s better now. At that point in my life, that was a very good way to either figure out if I had what it took or not. I’m pretty stubborn about getting better as an artist.

Weirdly, I’ve had this experience a few times, not just with art but also with my computer science studies. There was an initial experience designed to be very intense. It’s a bit of a litmus test inside of a crucible to say, “I’m going to go for the hard experience here to see because it’s not going to be extremely hard all the time, but it’s going to be hard over time. It’s going to be a sustained effort over time. I want to see that I can do this intense burst of an experience as a way of testing my mettle, but also telling myself a new story that I can do this, and that I’m capable of doing this.”

Maybe you were the best sculptor in the room or maybe not, but you got through the experience in a way that told you, “Okay.” I think about this also in terms of parenting. I can tell you from experience twice that if you can get through that first year of a newborn and stay married, you can probably do anything.

I’m not on that journey yet, but someday.

We’re going to have to have you back on the show because there are so many stories and so many transformative moments. I know that you teach and you’ve been doing this for many years, so you’re very good at it. Thank you, first of all, for coming and sharing your wisdom. I already know what I want to talk about in terms of what this episode is about. It’s a beautiful idea of making art and not making excuses. It could be making art. It could be creating your next project or your next business. It’s so globally applicable. If people want to find out more about your work and about the Expanded Brush Exhibition, where’s a good place that people can find all of these things?

There are two places I would recommend. Dan Chudzinski on Instagram is the only social media that I’m super active on at the moment. The other place I would recommend is to do a Google search. I’ve done a lot of interviews for the museum and for here. Despite my best efforts, I’m pretty easy to find online.

I encourage everyone to check out your work and also the work that you’ve spent so much time supporting both at the museum and the exhibition, which is so great. I know a lot of the artists there that I’ve had the pleasure of participating there. Don’t forget that you can buy the artists’ work there and support the artists. They get 100% of the commission, which I don’t think I knew, Dan. That’s amazing.

I’m happy to do it.

Thank you so much for coming. We’re going to have you back. Thanks very much.

It’s a pleasure to be here.

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Make art, not excuses. If you take one thing away from that episode, and I don’t care if it’s art. Maybe you’re creative. Maybe you’re trying to figure out parenting or relationships. Make whatever it is that you want to make. Make your vision, and stop making excuses. That’s a beautiful message. Dan and I talked for probably another hour after that episode. We’re going to have him back on because he has so many of these fascinating stories. All of them are these 30-degree, 180-degree right turns. Life is filled with these things. When you’re someone like Dan, who’s willing to see opportunities and explore those opportunities, transformation happens. 

As always, please like, subscribe, and share these with your friends. If you have someone who would love to hear this story, that’s the best way that you can support this show. Thanks for tuning in and I will see you next time.

Important Links:

• Instagram – Dan Chudzinski
• www.MazzaMuseum.org

About Dan Chudzinski

With a command of techniques rivaled only by his diverse interests, Dan Chudzinski’s quest to improve his artistic skillset has led to a host of unusual adventures. Throughout various chapters of his life, he has worked as a zoo taxidermist, apprenticed under master marble carvers in the mountains of Northern Italy, made functional artillery pieces for film and television, and created totem poles with Tlingit master carvers in Alaska. Born and raised in Fremont, OH, Dan received a B.F.A. in Sculpture and a B.A. in History from Miami University. He received an M.F.A. in Three Dimensional studies from Bowling Green State University. Dan is the Director of Curation and Exhibitions at the Mazza Museum of International Art from Picture Books (University of Findlay), which houses the world’s first and largest collection of original illustrations from picture books. The museum serves as host to the annual Enchanted Brush Exhibition, a free event that Dan founded and curates to showcase the works of his friends in the Imaginative Realism genre.