Time of Reflection

Eddie Dominguez is a New Mexico-based ceramic artist who has spent much of his career examining functional household objects.

Time of Reflection expresses how the artist has made use of some of the basic tenets of Minimalism. Seriality, or repetition, is one of the trademarks of Minimalism. In Dominguez's sculpture, the same forms of plates, bowls, mugs, and pitchers are repeated over and over. This is true of any practicing potter, who can sit at the wheel and throw the same form with great precision and similarity. But Dominguez has glazed each and every functional pot in black and placed them-or better yet composed them-as a single unit. Without the variation of glazes, you tend to look less at the surface treatment of the individual pieces and more at their forms and see an overall balance in how they are displayed. The single color also references the school of monochrome painting, which is a close kin to Minimalism. Lastly, the shelving unit creates a grid-not unlike the other grids you'll see in this room. Only Dominguez's use of the grid seems to suggest that the grid, repetition, and the monochromatic are part of our daily life, much like a morning cup of coffee in a favorite clay mug.