Like many of his generation, Daniel abandoned his imagined life-path to confront the AIDS epidemic through activism. In 2003, as he was approaching fifty, Daniel initiated his third act. With a move to Italy in pursuit of the art, culture, and language of his heritage, Daniel apprenticed at a Venetian family foundry. He initiated his academic study of art in Florence. In 2011, Daniel received an MFA from California College of the Arts. He has been an artist-in-residence at the University of Oklahoma, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, LASALLE College of the Arts, Fondazione Pistoletto, and Kala Art Institute. His art has been presented in Milan, Rome, Florence, Singapore, Kansas City, Aspen, and San Francisco. Daniel lives and loves with his partner, Deary Duffie, in San Francisco and Tuscany.

Presently, Daniel’s activism is as a storyteller. Ceramics, photography, excavations of history, pigment, myth, and memories of genocide are co-conspirators, fusing to build the backgrounds and characters for the stories he tells. By combining material and story, Daniel creates new means to see the old and uses old methods to discover the new.