FROM TH E STA C K S
Dominic
Di Mare:
Houses for
fhe Sacred
ST O R Y BY
Christine Kaminsky
“M y work has always been o f a personal
autobiographical nature
...
”—Dominic D i M ar
“Using a carefully chosen vocabulary of
skeletal materials (wood, bone) and fibrous
ones (paper, felt, thread), [Dominic] Di
Mare builds structures for ceremonious
At the heart of the sixth
floor of 72 Spring Street
in New York City is
the American Craft
Council library', one
of the largest collections
in this country' of craft,
art and design books
documenting the studio
craft movement from
the 1940s to the present.
The over 14,000 vol-
umes include the
Council’s 68-year pub-
lishing history-all past
issues of
C ra ft Horizons
and American Craft.
We’d like to share some
of this amazing past
with you each issue as
we dig through the
stacks. And if you hap-
pen to be in New York,
the library is open to the
public by appointment.
attention to deeply felt experiences,” wrote
art critic Betty Park in her lyrical profile
of the Bay Area artist in the October/
November 1982 issue of American Craft.
These shrine-like forms, holding memo-
ries of the artist’s childhood experiences
helping his fisherman father with lines and
lures, are considered Di Mare’s signature
works, and they were honored in a touring
retrospective curated by Signe Mayfield,
which premiered at the Palo Alto Art Center
in 1997. But he has also pursued other
directions, such as a series of watercolor
self-portraits and one-of-a-kind books in
watercolor and ink scored with precise cut
outs. “Di Mare is not an artist who stands
still to one kind of medium,” says Mayfield,
who finds his books “incomparable, with
sequential narratives of changing forms that
are taunting windows to successive pages.”
Elected a Fellow of the American Craft
Council in 1987 and a recipient of the
Council’s Gold Medal in 1999, Di Mare is
represented in many museum collections,
including, most recently, that of the Metro-
politan Museum of Art. Although Di Mare
is recognized as a pioneer of American stu-
dio craft, as Park observed in 1982, “his
work eludes attempts to encompass it with-
in any movement.”
My work has always been of a personal
autobiographical nature and has quietly
evolved into a quasi-diary form,” says Di
Mare, “so exhibiting has not been foremost
in my mind. 1 continue to work every day
in my studio, still with a strong connection
to a work ethic that has served me well for
he last 40 years.” Nevertheless, visitors to
the Palo Alto Art Center June 20-Sept. 4
have the opportunity to view another imag-
ining by Di Mare—enigmatic watercolor
cutouts in an exquisitely constructed five-
panel box. ♦
To view the entire American Craft article,
visit us at americancraftmag.org.
072 american craft junc/julyio
www.WorldMags.net & www.Journal-Plaza.net
Photos Schopplein Studio.
