Dominic L. Di Mare (born 1932) is an American artist and craftsperson, known for his

weaving Weaving is a method of textile production in which two distinct sets of yarns or threads are interlaced at right angles to form a fabric or cloth. Other methods are knitting, crocheting, felting, and braiding or plaiting. The longitudinal ...

, abstract mixed-media sculpture, watercolor paintings, cast paper art, and

fiber art Fiber (spelled fibre in British English; from ) is a #Natural fibers, natural or Fiber#Artificial fibers, artificial substance that is significantly longer than it is wide. Fibers are often used in the manufacture of other materials. The st ...

. His work touches on themes of personal spirituality. He is based in Tiburon,

California California () is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

Biography

Dominic Di Mare was born in 1932 in

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

. He grew up in Monterey,

where his Sicilian-born father owned a fishing boat. He was primarily a self taught artist, however he had taken classes at

San Francisco State University San Francisco State University (San Francisco State, SF State and SFSU) is a Public university, public research university in San Francisco, California, United States. It was established in 1899 as the San Francisco State Normal School and is ...

(SFSU) and summer classes at

California College of the Arts The California College of the Arts (CCA) is a private art school in San Francisco, California. It was founded in Berkeley, California in 1907 and moved to a historic estate in Oakland, California in 1922. In 1996, it opened a second campus in ...

(formally known as California College of Arts and Crafts). He learned about weaving while at SFSU, and he taught himself how to weave by studying photos of Kay Sekimachi woven wall hanging in '' Craft Horizons'' magazine. He had his first art exhibition in the early 1960s in San Francisco. In the mid-1960s, he was a junior high school art teacher while creating his work. He taught in the public school system for 17 years. In the 1970s he began making handmade rag papers, often incorporating things you may find on a beach like feathers. Dominic Di Mare had a few

retrospective A retrospective (from Latin ', "look back"), generally, is a look back at events that took place, or works that were produced, in the past. As a noun, ''retrospective'' has specific meanings in software development, popular culture, and the arts. ...

exhibitions including at Palo Alto Art Center (formally called the Palo Alto Cultural Center) in 1997, ''Dominic Di Mare: A Retrospective'' at Renwick Gallery of the National Museum of American Art in 1999, and ''Anchors in Time: Dominic Di Mare'' at the San Francisco Museum of Craft and Design in 2018. He was awarded the American Craft Council's Gold Medal in 1999. His work is included in various public museum collections including the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...

, Centraal Museum, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (FAMSF),

Smithsonian American Art Museum The Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM; formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds one of the world's lar ...

Oakland Museum of California Oakland is a city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area in the U.S. state of California. It is the county seat and most populous city in Alameda County, California, Alameda County, with a population of 440,646 in 2020. A major We ...

Minneapolis Institute of Art The Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) is an arts museum located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. Home to more than 90,000 works of art representing 5,000 years of world history, Mia is one of the List of largest art museums, largest ar ...

, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, and others.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Di Mare, Dominic 1932 births Living people Artists from San Francisco People from Tiburon, California Artists from Marin County, California San Francisco State University alumni Weavers from California People from Monterey, California 20th-century American male artists Fellows of the American Craft Council