Red Lodge Clay Center – Short-Term Resident (AIA) 2025
Dom is a biracial potter born in rural Wisconsin and raised in the Twin Cities of Minnesota. Dom earned an M.F.A. in ceramic sculpture from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 2010. He wood fires with Glencoe Ceramics and currently serves as instructor of Fine Arts at Riverland Community College in Austin, MN.
My function-based clay work is informed not only by a general appreciation of Japanese aesthetics but the mixed and mashed up historical milieu that is part of our modern American landscape. Because the pots are imbued with a sense of time, tradition, and intent they are made from much more than simply ground grit, clay, and dust. Each time I sit down at the potter’s wheel to make a pot I can’t help but think about things like displacement and struggle; but also durability and growth. As a person of African-American descent I also connect to a history of displacement. My labor becomes a form of veneration in that I believe that a shared meal or a full cup is often a form of celebration. Not to mention that a well-made pot can bring an additional level of meaning to the table.
I also work with ceramic sculpture and mixed media installation. Unlike the domestic and recognizable utilitarian qualities of the pottery I produce, the hybrid sculptures and installations introduce an element of minimalism and repetition to investigate the dynamics and composition of groups and populations. My ceramic sculptural installations connect to identity, groups, and belonging. I use ceramics as an investigative medium to probe how individuals, particularly those of color, fit into our heterogeneous society. A study of clay and surface that is analogous to flesh and skin. The work becomes an allegory for human interactions – the relationships between individuals and the larger whole.