A flower bud is a cup; a leaf is a plate. While most people tend to draw a clear distinction between artistic works and functional crafts, Eddie Dominguez, an assistant professor in the department of art and art history at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, said he has always been interested in combining craft and fine art in multimedia forms.
Invited by the fine arts department of the University of Colorado at Boulder, Dominguez will give a public lecture on Oct. 30 at 7:30 p.m. at the Sibell-Wolle Fine Arts Building, N141. In his lecture, Dominguez will talk about the various inspirations for his works and answer questions from the audience, who in turn will be given a chance to marvel at the artist's highly textural and exotically colorful clay pieces.
Trained as a ceramic artist, Dominguez continues to find combined forms, cultures and media more exciting than the pure artistic expression. He sees his artistic output as "art of the people" and examines the issues of how people arrange and interact with the objects they use and live with. Dominguez is particularly noted for creating fully functional sculptural dinner sets that perform as unified sculpture, as well as working components.
As Dominguez puts it, his work has to do with the way the edges meet. "Out here there is a severe contrast between the mountains and the sky. My art is very much a combination of my training, experience, family, culture and the land," said Dominguez.
Dominguez, in his third year at UNL, received his BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art and his MFA from New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University. His work has been exhibited extensively across the country and has recently been purchased by the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
His solo exhibitions include The Munson Gallery in Santa Fe, N.M., and the Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis. The visiting artist program at CU is in its second year of a three-year exploration of land and environmental issues in the visual arts. Titled "There's no place like home: Art and (dis)Location," the project will invite North, South, Central American and Caribbean artists to engage in a critical, cross-continental dialogue on themes of geography and immigration, cultural identity and dislocation.
The project has been funded by the Roser Foundation and CU's student activity fees.