WORCESTER — Dominic Quagliozzi has a joke with his wife, Debra Bianculli.
She thinks the perfect headline for this story would be “Local boy still alive.” The suggestion isn’t far off because Quagliozzi didn’t think he would live past the age of 40 after being diagnosed with cystic fibrosis when he was 3 months old.
Quagliozzi passed that age milestone two years ago and looks forward to the possibility of many years ahead to pursue his passions. One is spending time with his family including his 4-year-old son, Thaelo. The child is named after a synthetic paint pigment and it meshes perfectly with Quagliozzi’s other passion of making art.
Some of his works are currently on display at the Worcester Art Museum through June 21. Oil paintings, drawings, a video and a few installations made of hospital gowns — some worn by Quagliozzi — fill a space in the museum’s Open Door Gallery in an exhibit titled “Home Body.”
The show represents Quagliozzi’s long medical journey and his appreciation for the caregivers who have watched over him.
“Home for me is making art and I do it wherever,” he said.
Frequent hospital stays on both coasts
Home for the Worcester born and raised Quagliozzi, at least a big chunk of it, has been spent in hospitals on the East and West Coasts since he was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis. He spent the first 19 years of his life in and out of UMass Memorial Medical Center and still gets some of his care there.
Cystic fibrosis attacked Quagliozzi’s lungs and nine years ago he had a double-lung transplant after spending more than three years on the donor list. The genetic disorder creates thick and sticky mucus that poses a danger to the body’s organs, especially to the lungs that need clear airways.
Roughly 40,000 children and adults in the U.S. and more than 100,000 people worldwide are living with cystic fibrosis.
Nightmares and panic attacks
There is currently no cure for the disorder and it used to be a death sentence in childhood. Quagliozzi had nightmares and panic attacks as a child because he worried about the possibility of a short life. As a teenager, doctors told him he might make it through high school. In high school, he was told he could live into his mid 20s.
Given those timelines, it’s no surprise Quagliozzi never thought he would live to see 40. However, with medical advances, people with cystic fibrosis are living longer. Half of babies born in 2021 with the disorder are expected, on average, to reach the age of 65 or older, according to the National Institutes of Health.
Room 555: Home way from home
Quagliozzi missed a lot of class time at the former Saint Peter-Marian High School because he was in and out of UMass Memorial Medical Center receiving treatment.
Room 555 in the hospital’s pediatric unit was his home away from home and it’s there where Quagliozzi taught himself how to paint. His mother, Cathleen Corcoran, brought him his first oil paint set and Quagliozzi watched a lot of Bob Ross painting tutorials while laid up in a hospital bed.
Some UMass nurses paid $10 and $20 a pop for his paintings and it dawned on Quagliozzi for the first time that he might be able to make a living as a painter. He has a masters degree in fine arts from California State University, Los Angeles.
One of the work’s in Quagliozzi’s current exhibit is an oil painting of room 555, next to another oil painting of the living room in his childhood home on Smith Lane.
“’Home Body’ represents a sick body in transition,” said Quagliozzi. “Those two locations are my childhood homes. There’s a connection I felt with the caretakers at UMass and at home.”
“Home for me is making art and I do it wherever.”
Artist Dominic Quagliozzi
Another painting, titled “Blue Robe,” incorporates plastic tubing that Quagliozzi needed at his childhood home to get oxygen into his lungs. Another wall displays drawings of items from his hospital rooms and the video titled “Coughing” at the Worcester Art Museum gives the viewer the sounds of coughing inside the museum’s atrium.
It’s a space that requires visitors to be quiet, but for someone like Quagliozzi with a chronic illness, he said, “it’s impossible to be quiet.”
Lungs take a beating
Cystic fibrosis has done a serious number on Quagliozzi’s lungs. He has lived with constant infections and inflammations and 10 years ago he spent four days in a medically-induced coma after suffering acute lung failure.
“I was literally dying.”
That experience and others served as inspiration to use pieces of hospital gowns in two colorful works on display in “Home Body.” One is a butterfly that is a nod to Quagliozzi’s childhood.
The other looks like a house, titled “Home.” It represents Quagliozzi’s body that serves as a home to his two donated lungs. The work also represents Quagliozzi’s return to Massachusetts from California. Quagliozzi and Bianculli moved to the West Coast for the warm therapeutic sunshine and it’s where Quagliozzi experienced life-threatening health problems including the coma followed by the double-lung transplant that doctors performed at Stanford Medical Center in 2015.
The couple moved back to Massachusetts three years ago and it’s that return that is embedded in the meaning of “Home.” “The emotional and physical labor of being sick and moving. The unknown of where you’re going and the unknown outcomes of being sick,” said Quagliozzi.
Prognosis: ‘Mostly good’
Today, Quagliozzi said his health is “mostly good.”
He developed diabetes after the double-lung transplant and suffers with chronic kidney disease that might require a future transplant.
Meanwhile, Quagliozzi’s transplanted lungs are only operating at 45% of their normal function. He was diagnosed with chronic lung rejection, so a significant portion of his lungs are scar tissue.
“In a couple of years, I might need another lung transplant. Every breath I take, there is risk for infections and inflammation,” he said.
Despite the ongoing challenges, Quagliozzi is determined to keep making art and see his son grow up.
Married for a dozen years, the couple has settled in Holden. Quagliozzi is a stay-at-home dad and teaches art classes, while Bianculli is an art teacher at Worcester’s Tatnuck Magnet School.
A big day
Saturday represents a special moment for Quagliozzi because he will host a special guided tour of his exhibit for his UMass Memorial caregivers through the years.
Retired UMass nurse Cathy Guadagnoli hopes to be there. She first laid eyes on Quagliozzi when he was admitted to the hospital when he was 4 years old and remembers his multiple admissions through the years, some lasting two weeks, others several months.
She also remembers his artistic talent.
“I knew early on he had a gift for being a fantastic artist and I remember telling him that in his teen years during one of his admissions,” said Guadagnoli. “He was dong paintings and drawings and selling them to make money, like a lemonade stand.
“He made a painting for me and I told him I was going to save this because someday he was going to be a famous artist.” Guadagnoli thinks that painting is somewhere in her house and predicts Saturday’s tour will bring a wave of emotions.
“All this poor kid has been through, it makes my heart explode to see how well he’s doing. He was so sick for so many years,” she said. “He’s a great kid.”
Contact Henry Schwan at henry.schwan@telegram.com. Follow him on X: @henrytelegram.