FINDLAY — For Dan Chudzinski, a bison jaw and moose cranium are artistic treasures; they are materials that can help an audience transcend into the fantastical world.
That is just the objective at the 10th annual Enchanted Brush exhibit at the University of Findlay’s Mazza Museum, where visitors can peer into the worlds of unearthly monsters and fairytale characters.
The Mazza Museum is showcasing a selection of fantasy artworks from across the world. The exhibition, which opened June 21 and will run through Aug. 30, is free and open to the public. This year’s theme is Heroes Welcome.
“The idea for Heroes Welcome was that every great story has a hero,” said Chudzinski, director of curation and exhibitions at Mazza and founder of the Enchanted Brush exhibit. “Heroes come in all shapes and sizes, and so, if you ask an artist to interpret that theme, I knew that we would be guaranteed to find a few surprises, which is precisely what inspired the exhibition.”
As visitors meander the Lea Gallery of the Gardner Fine Arts Pavilion, they will find 25 works of art representing 22 international fantasy artists. This exhibit will be the only time that viewers will ever have the chance to see these specific works of art in the same room, Chudzinski said.
Artist Vanessa Lemen is both “grateful and honored” to show her work at the Enchanted Brush exhibit alongside so many other talented artists.
She appreciates the broad nature of the exhibition’s themes and how Chudzinski is open to a multiplicity of artistic interpretations.
The painting she contributed to the showcase was inspired by Rumi — a 13th century Persian poet — who said, “Be ground. Be crumbled, so wildflowers will come up where you are.” The painting speaks to humility, empathy, and the gift of giving.
“I see heroes as being your everyday people that are lifting us up or even just being real — being genuine human beings,” Lemen said.
When Lemen was creating the painting, she drew on inspiration from daily surroundings, medieval-era writings, and Greek mythology. Rather than sketch out a plan on the canvas, she just made a few marks and dived right in.
“I am really grateful for these kinds of shows because they’re accepting of me and also celebrating this other way of thinking,” she said.
The idea struck for the Enchanted Brush exhibition back in the summer of 2015, when Chudzinski was at a fantasy convention in Kansas City. He had been asked to put together an exhibit for one of the University of Findlay galleries as a guest curator. Finding himself surrounded by artistic and literary heroes at dinner, he knew he had to act.
“At this dinner, I posed the question to the group of artists who I had just met: if you could create your favorite fairytale character without having an art director tell you what that should look like, who would you create?” Chudzinski said. “And so that conversation continued until the staff kicked us out of the restaurant. And I knew, two hours later, there's something here.”
The challenge was, a lot of the artists at the dinner were actively working for Disney, Pixar, or Game of Thrones. They were busy and scattered across the world, Chudzinski said. He had to find a way to incentivize their participation, and he quickly came up with a unique exhibition model.
If artists took the time to create an original work, Chudzinski would not only display it but allow the artist to offer it for sale. If it is sold, the artist would get 100 percent of the commission.
“That deal stands to this day,” Chudzinski said.
Chudzinski typically gives the artists a theme about a year to six months in advance, and they send a work of art that they either created to debut at Enchanted Brush or that was pre-existing and fit the theme.
“I will say that unboxing the artwork, every season for me, makes me feel like a kid on Christmas morning,” Chudzinski said.
Ed Binkley, an artist based in Madison, Wisc., has participated in the Enchanted Brush exhibit since it first launched a decade ago. His love for fantasy art, however, started much earlier.
“I have been drawing monsters and creatures since I was four years old,” Binkley said.
This year, he contributed a work titled Sabra and the Dragon . The piece was inspired by The Golden Legend, which dates back to the 13th century. The medieval text relays the tale of St. George slaying a dragon but features a princess who is meant to be sacrificed. Binkley decided to make Princess Sabra the focal point of his artwork rather than St. George.
“I have a tendency to want to find the hidden hero or the hero that didn’t get all the publicity,” Binkley said.
In an alternate interpretation of the legend, Chudzinski himself contributed a mixed media sculpture titled The Reliquary of St. George . The piece depicts a life-sized dragon skull with an ancient spear piercing the cranium. While elements are completely hand sculpted, such as the beak and the horns, other parts of the dragon are modeled from animal bone.
For Binkley, the opportunity and community Chudzinski has built for fantasy artists is deeply meaningful. When Binkley was in art school, he felt choosing to create fantasy art was “heresy”. Now, he is part of an exhibition that not only showcases but celebrates the genre.
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