September 2008 - The Parklander Magazine

Daddona is on the run. He has as much business
as he can handle and his craftsmen are working
70 hours some weeks. “These are talented
people,” he says,“And I am very proud of them.”
Now, turn the clock back to the early ’70s. Dan
Daddona wanted to be an artist but there
wasn’t as much call for commercial art as there
is today. So, he taught school in Connecticut.
As a teacher in the early ’70s, he says he
struggled to make ends meet on $8,000 a year,
so in 1974 he started an art business. Much of
it was painting large murals. At some point, a
client asked if he would create a three-dimensional piece. Using styrofoam, he
created a big set of lips – pop art. He was then on his way to creating more threedimensional
pieces, and has been doing “fun stuff ” ever since.
…one of the most imposing
objects in the space is a
fiberglass octopus,
the body of which is about 50 feet across.
Tentacles more than
15 feet long are being attached.
Understandably, a client who’s opening a new theme restaurant or retail store is
in a hurry, and sometimes they want to advance the deadline for work to be done.
There’s constant pressure to produce. And sometimes the creative process takes
time; you’re not buying things off the shelf.
DAN DADDONA continues on page 66
the PARKLANDER
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