The studio was cluttered with paint, books and letters. Oriental rugs lined the floor. Beside the large window two artists sat talking about anything and everything. The conversation ranged from art to life and back again. The young artist felt almost as if he were talking with a close classmate—a classmate with half a century of life experience and advice to offer, he remembers years later, after the old man had died.
“Stay curious,” the teacher, Nick Todisco, would repeat again and again. “I’m not here to applaud your victories like a grandparent. I’m here to shine light on your weaknesses. I’m your mentor.” The young artist, Shane LaVancher, was not the only artist, let alone person, whose life Todisco touched.
“He could find within each student what their interests were, and use that as a hook in a sense, and build on that,” says Robert Niedzwiecki, Todisco’s former student and close friend. “It didn’t matter {who the student was}. They were all geniuses walking in his door. And his job was to find your genius. That’s kind of the way he saw students. That was his puzzle.”
Todisco, whose media of choice were painting and drawing, died in October at age 75. Former students flocked back to Syracuse from as far away as France for the services. But these were just a few of the hundreds of students who passed through Todisco’s classes during his five decades of teaching high school art at Westhill and LaFayette and Onondaga Community College.
Beginning Wednesday, Jan. 23, former students, local artists and community members can experience what his students appreciated in Nick Todisco: A Life’s Work. The show will be housed at the Szodza Gallery, 501 W. Fayette St., Suite 106, and will run through Saturday, Feb. 2. A closing celebration will take place that day from 5 to 8 p.m.
“It’s not a memorial, it’s a celebration of his life,” explains gallery creator Caroline Szodza-McGowan. “We’ve managed to get a nice selection of different styles of artwork, different time periods.”
According to Niedzwiecki, Todisco knew art was his passion from an early age. “His parents were wanting him to take music lessons. They would fund that, but not art lessons,” says Niedzwiecki. “So he had an art teacher somewhere that knew Nick’s passion for it at that early age and wanted to help him. So that person—whoever that person was, male or female, I have no idea—that person paid for his lessons at the Everson on Saturdays. And that’s how he got into the beginning of it.”
After taking lessons, Todisco entered an art competition and won $50. After this, his parents thought he was fabulous, Niedzwiecki says, and supported him. Eventually Todisco left Syracuse to study art at SUNY New Paltz. “He always had the intent of going into education, I think. And he did,” says Niedzwiecki.
In the more recent years of his life, Todisco’s health began to fail. “He was ill for an unfortunately long period of time here,” Niedzwiecki adds. “So in conversation, I did ask him significant questions, like, ‘How did you get so good at teaching?’ He answered: ‘I was never satisfied with the kind of projects and what I was taught to teach, so I just kept experimenting. And if something worked, I’d build on that, and build on that, and build on that.’
“He had a really different approach to teaching. He individualized everything. That’s the kind of commitment he had to his students. He mentored,” says Niedzwiecki. “He didn’t just teach, he mentored. He wasn’t sitting in the hall talking to somebody and drinking coffee, he was kicking my ass through the door to do something.”
Todisco began “kicking Niedzwiecki’s ass” when he had the student at Westhill. After a tumultuous few years—“He probably liked me because I was a difficult student,” Niedzwiecki says, thinking back and laughing—Todisco took the reigns for Niedzwiecki in his senior year, entering him into the Scholastic art competition.
“When you’re a senior, you’re allowed to put a portfolio in. I was like, ‘I’m not going to do this. I’m not doing this,’” says Niedzwiecki. “So he got ticked off at me, and he framed all my stuff for me. He shoved the paper in front of me.”
“Sign it,” Todisco said. “Sign these forms.”
“I said OK and he entered my portfolio,” the student remembers. “I won locally and then I won nationally. And if that hadn’t happened—you know, I’m math and science. I had no knowledge that I had any talent or ability, I just loved doing art, but it wasn’t going anywhere. So that was, for me, a life changing experience that he didn’t have to do. And if you were to talk to all of his students, they’d all tell you the same kind of story.”
Niedzwiecki’s not the only student whose life Todisco changed. He helped a student struggling in English learn to write better. He drove someone to a college interview at Rochester Institute of Technology. He personally drove to someone’s house to convince them to return to school. It seems as though the list could march on for hours.
“Teaching was his passion,” Niedzwiecki says simply. “He was always finding kids who were lost or confused or having trouble. And he would sense that, and he would be their rock. And you never noticed it, but all the sudden you were on the right path. He had the kind of magic ability to do that.”
Along with teaching, Todisco had studio space at Delavan Art Gallery since 1993, where he got to know owner Bill Delavan. “He was a teacher of teachers,” says Delavan. “It wasn’t like he did it in an extensive or bravado kind of way, he simply did it. And he did it very, very well.”
Throughout his life, Todisco was unceasingly generous, says Niedzwiecki, never asking for anything in return. “We’re doing this celebration party to think about the gifts that he gave us. His passing is a loss, but don’t look at it that way,” says Niedzwiecki.
“He faced adversity with great dignity, and that’s a great lesson for us all. I was with him, we were driving back up north, and he got a phone call from the doctor,” says Niedzwiecki. “He was going to have a routine surgery to get him back on the right path, and he was doing fine. He was doing really well. And he sensed immediately something was wrong. His demeanor really changed. And then he thought about it a couple minutes.
“‘Yup, well, I’ve had a great life,’” Todisco said, as remembered by Niedzwiecki. “‘I don’t regret anything. I don’t miss a thing. I’ve had a great life.’”
For more information, visit the Nick Todisco Celebration Page on Facebook, or call the Szozda Gallery at 579-2805.
