Her brother's keeper

BUCKS COUNTY, Pennsylvania — Danielle Sapienza has always had a passion for the arts. What started as an interest in music morphed into working her creative magic with a camera. But it was the loss of her younger brother, Matthew, that led the former Findlay resident to become an abstract mixed media artist. As part of the healing process, she created a painting that included some of his ashes. "I was painting with his ashes on canvas and it turned out to be one of the most healing things I had done," she said. Sapienza, 43, grew up in Findlay. Her mother, Debra Sapienza, still lives in town, as does her father, Dominic Sapienza. "I lived sort of close to Donnell Pond. And my best memories of Findlay as a child were riding my bike around Donnell Pond and searching for tadpoles and frogs," she said. "And now if I see a tadpole or hear a frog, I'm automatically drawn right back to my childhood of Donnell Pond." She was involved in the arts at Findlay High School, performing with Findlay First Edition and the orchestra. Sapienza said it was easy to embrace the arts in Findlay. "It gave me the courage to branch out and just to try whatever you want," she said. After graduating from Findlay High School in 1999, Sapienza lived in Cincinnati four years, then moved to New York City to work as a singer-songwriter. She played at places like the music club CBGB and the Bitter End, the city's oldest rock club. She later moved on to photography, starting her own business called Danielle Guenther Photography. "I was working in New York City photographing families and campaigns and working with brands, and it was quite a fun project," she said. "I was creating these lifestyle images that were embracing the chaos of parenting. They were very staged and it was very exciting." The last series was called Forever Young and dealt with the elderly. She said a few of the models were from Findlay. "My grandma is in one of them hitchhiking on the side of the road, all dressed up waiting for her ride to pick her up in a vintage car," she said. "It was so fun. One of them dressed up doing a peace sign in front of all of her books. I mean it's so cute." Her photography went viral in 2015-16 and put Sapienza on the map. "The news and the press got a hold of it and I was like, 'oh, I guess I'm a photographer now,'" she laughed. But it was also overwhelming, said Sapienza, who had a 3-year-old at the time. She said it was Matthew's death in 2015 that led her to painting. Shortly after he passed, Sapenzia said he came to her in dreams telling her that he had figured out how to get to her by traveling through different realms. "And I couldn't pronounce any of the realm names and he was laughing at me. He was like, 'don't worry about it. Just know that I'm your guardian angel,'" she said. "And that is what my new show is about right now, me kind of channeling the realms and channeling this sort of afterlife and these beautiful colors." Matthew wanted to be cremated after his death, she said. "So we did that and I had his ashes. It was probably about a year after he passed and I just couldn't get over his passing. You feel like you've lost a piece of your own childhood when you lose a sibling," she said. She bought a canvas and used his ashes in the painting. "It was very different because I was using an element that I had not used and I did not know how it was going to turn out," Sapienza said. "I knew that I wanted his energy to be with me somehow that I could visually see, that I could visually know he's there." She also used his favorite colors - turquoise and deep blues. "So I was using those colors and I felt very connected with those, and those are my familiar colors, colors that I love, those calming blues, turquoise, ocean, the Caribbean colors like that," she said. Sapienza has also been spreading her brother's ashes through the years. "I travel quite a bit and I spread his ashes anywhere I go. He's in Portugal. He's in Italy. He's all over the place now," she said. In 2020, Sapienza and her husband, Scott, moved to Bucks County, Pennsylvania. "I never thought I would leave New York City. I thought I was a city girl through and through," she said. "And now I'm feeding my birds. I'm gardening. We stopped at my friend's house and played with her chickens." At the time, she wasn't doing any photography because she wasn't comfortable working in people's homes during COVID. "And I was like, well, painting seems like a fabulous idea," she said. "And once I moved out to Pennsylvania, I was like, wow, I really loved painting when I was going through that dark time and times have changed because of COVID. I really wanted to get back into that." She has since done a couple of heirloom pieces for clients who have sent her ashes from their loved ones. "They have them hanging in their homes. And it turned into this wow, OK, now I'm doing this and helping people heal through this process with their family's ashes," she said. Sapienza also does custom pieces without ashes, but using texture paste, gold wiring, gold leaf and sometimes glass and wax. "And so a lot of it is mixed media, It's very eclectic. It's very earthy and that's kind of like embracing this nature that we're in now being in Bucks County and just kind of fully encompassing the elements of nature in the paintings," she explained. The couple have two sons, Lochlan, who is 14, and Bohdi, 4½. "Life is pretty good now. I love it," she said. "It's amazing, too, how COVID kind of changed everybody's lives. A lot of people left the east coast, left the west coast, left the major cities which is exactly what we did. But I think a lot of people have found new careers and new paths. And it leads you sometimes to a new chapter of your life that's really intriguing."