Local Napa artist Mario Chiodo’s studio is tucked away among rows of understated warehouse buildings in an industrial corner of Napa Valley. Inside, behind a non-descript unmarked door, lies a veritable treasure trove of wonders showcasing an intriguingly mysterious room home to dreams and creatures, legends and monsters, icons and angels.
Mario Chiodo is the wildly talented yet extraordinarily humble artistic prodigy whose work is ubiquitous in countless hit movies. Amid a collection of fantastical forms, ranging from ghoulish creatures to seraphic figures, are the visages of icons, from Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King to Mother Theresa and Maya Angelou. Here, the dichotomy between reality and fantasy is ever-present, as is the juxtaposition between the artist and the man, whose journey to art was also full of contradictions.
Born with a rare form of color blindness called tritanopia, Chiodo sees the world through gradient shades of grey. For anyone, especially a budding artist, this limitation may otherwise have dampened the view of the world, let alone brightened it. For this creative soul who expressed his ideas through intricate black-and-white drawings and modeling clay, the lack of vivid color was compensated by a proclivity for depth and dimensionality. As the young artist drew and sculpted, the nooks and crannies of faces and forms took a new meaning.
Recognizing their child’s challenges within traditional educational systems, his parents enrolled him in a cutting-edge academy focused on engaging students’ academic abilities through art expression. It was here, at The Renaissance School, that Chiodo flourished, finally excelling at school. By artfully correlating the work of virtuosos, such as Davinci, Michelangelo, and Rodin, with traditional school subjects, his teachers were able to motivate and inspire this 12-year-old boy, leading him almost unknowingly to embrace the semantics, such as geometry, that are behind sculptural art.
Fast-forwarding to his early 20s, still enthralled with sculpting and creating human and fantasy forms, Chiodo took small entry-level jobs as he pitched his monsters and creatures to Hollywood. Eventually, getting wind of a first-of-its-kind Halloween products trade show in Chicago, the very green and inexperienced young artist scraped together money, buying himself a display booth at the event. What his booth lacked in panache did not diminish what it over-delivered in the way of ghouls and goblins.
On the first day of the event, Chiodo eagerly showed up on the convention center floor, but was dismayed to discover that he might be late in reaching his booth due to an enormous crowd blocking the aisle he needed to access. Unbeknownst to him, that large crowd had formed around one particular and very interesting booth – his. Buyer after buyer had lined up to meet the person behind these creatures. In fact, on that day, Sears Roebuck and Co., an American staple in retail department stores, became his first customer, placing a whopping order that opened the many doors to his future.
Mario with collector Arnold Schwarzenegger
Soon after, Hollywood came calling, and the big-name studios he had once chased were now coveting his work. Chiodo has enjoyed over 40 years of success within the lucrative business of fantasy figures and creatures, Halloween and Hollywood, working in all mediums and formats. He continued to fulfill his creative pursuits of drawing, designing, and molding forms, human or otherwise. Things were good, times were good. Then, on a terribly fated day, the United States was attacked. With the tragedy and aftermath of September 11th, Chiodo, like many Americans, found himself at a loss and wanting to offer something more, something good to the world.
It was then that he decided to take his art form in another direction, one that had a deeper meaning behind it and would somehow honor and pay tribute to those who have made extraordinarily selfless contributions and sacrifices, such as those of the first responders in New York. With this goal in mind, Chiodo began work on an epic monument to be cast in bronze, measuring 35 feet tall and 125 feet in diameter. With his sights set on Oakland, California, the thought-provoking memorial, called Remember Them, had not yet been approved for placement anywhere, nor had it been commissioned. However, Chiodo deeply believed in this work and began production regardless.
Serving as a poignant reminder of everyday people accomplishing exceptional endeavors, Remember Them prominently earned its place and sits in Chiodo’s hometown of Oakland, owing in no small part to Chiodo’s tenacity backed with additional muscle from prominent proponents such as Maya Angelou, herself, and then-Mayor of Oakland and former Governor of California, Jerry Brown. Since the Remember Them monument, Chiodo has gone on to create other larger-than-life memorials across the country, each quietly paying tribute to the immortal heroes of our time, such as Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Nelson Mandela, Theodore Roosevelt, Rosa Parks, and countless others, reminding us of the giants who have gone before us.
Today, Mario can be found in his treasure cove workshop, amid monsters and monuments, graciously sharing his skills and craft with eager interns, imparting the nuances, processes, and business of art while paradoxically creating magnificent works for private collectors, wine estates, celebrities, renown foundations, and even the United States Congress. Through his gifted talents, Chiodo seamlessly fuses an offering full of fantasy and delight yet grounded in truth and reality.
