Dominic Di Mare, a Retrospective by Mayfield, Signe - 1998

Palo Alto, CA: Palo Alto Cultural Center, 1998. Softcover. Near Fine. Exhibition catalogue. 72 pp, with illustrations (about half in color), in original wrappers. Very light handling wear; else fine. "Dominic Di Mare grew up in Monterey, California, where his father owned and operated a commerical fishing boat. In the mid-1960s Di Mare, by then a San Francisco high school art teacher and self-taught studio weaver, was in the vanguard of the American fiber-art revolution. Fiercely three-dimensional and composed of a variety of yarns and natural fibers, his early sculptural hangings reveal the influence of tribal art forms. In 1970 Di Mare began to hand-make rag papers. Reaching into the slurry to lift up a layer of pulp stirred deep-seated memories of fishing trips off the coasts of California and Mexico. The bulky sheets of paper appeared like "frozen waves." Inspired by these boyhood memories, Di Mare stopped weaving and began to fabricate enigmatic culptures from handmade papers, polished hawthorne twigs, and feathers" (Smithsonian).