In conjunction with Cheyenne’s Cinco de Mayo celebration, the Wyoming State Museum will have on display the artwork of Eddie Dominguez, who’s ceramic sculpture and prints incorporates the rich cultural heritage of his Hispanic background.
The exhibit opens May 1 and will be on display through June 13. Dominguez will speak at the State Museum from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. on May 2, with a reception lasting until 6:30 p.m.
A native of Tucumcari, N.M., Dominguez creates artwork on the theme of his home environment, nostalgia and ideas of the culture. He attributes the influence of his aunt, who filled her house with quilts, doilies, crocheted curtains, braided rugs and shrines with his decision to become an artist.
"Art was my next-door neighbor making a quilt; it was my aunt crocheting, or my mother making a dress," Dominguez said. "The most honest influences that I have had can be found in the little things of my home."
Dominguez creates sculptures whose roots derive from familiar functional items, such as dinnerware sets that tread the boundaries between art, craft and kitsch. He has been doing the dinnerware sets for the past twenty-five years. However, his most recent works includes large-scale work such as rosaries and torsos. The lower portions of the torsos appear to be landscapes, the upper portion, skies or flowers growing. Dominguez relates the torsos to highway memorials.
Dominguez has a degree from the Cleveland Institute of Art and New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. In 2006 he was awarded the New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts for his innovative work in ceramics and as an educator and role model for youth. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and sits on the Boards of the Roswell Museum, the Georgia O’Keefe Foundation and the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts.
He has also received public art commissions in New York, Maine, New Mexico, Texas, Arizona, Nebraska, Massachusetts and Wisconsin.
His work is in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C., the Cooper-Hewitt Museum in New York, the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe, the Sheldon Art Gallery in Lincoln, Nebraska, the Cleveland Institute of Art, the Phoenix Airport, U.S. West Corporation and Hallmark Cards Corporation.
Dominguez is currently assistant professor of ceramics at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln.
The Wyoming State Museum is located in the Barrett Building, 2301 Central Avenue in Cheyenne.
FMI: State Museum, 307-777-7022, or http://wyomuseum.state.wy.us/
