"Gemstones II"    2002                             36" diameter, ceramic

     In the mid-Eighties Eddie Dominguez began examining the way household objects function in our culture.  Not with "punny" ironies (which would have been so easy considering the ceramic work of that period), but with an open reverence for the ceremonial and symbolic potential for the most humble places, events and things in our lives.   He has, over the years, "re-contextualized" just about every room in the house.  And, in his own way, de-constructed: tacky tourist trinkets, minimalism, the vessel, the landscape, dinnerware, race, craft, main-street and the family home. 

    Eddie's work has eluded the twin pitfalls of becoming overly formalistic or wallowing in ethnicity.  The youngest of eight kids, Eddie grew up in Tucumcari, New Mexico between the cheap motels of old route 66 and the train tracks. But Eddie's story is more than a cliché of a small-town-boy-makes-good. At it's heart lay an infectious optimism and joy that baffles both the jaded post-modernist and confounds the categorizers.  And while there is an uplifting quality to Eddie's work, there is also an edge...an edge between art and craft, between cute and beautiful, between Anglo and Hispanic, between chic and kitsch and between the mundane and the visionary.

Stephen Fleming,2002

"Night Garden"  2002  dinnerware set for twelve   ceramic, wood, leather