‘More Is More’ Is a Little Too Much

An anecdote in the written statement accompanying Eddie Dominguez’s current show, “More Is More” at the Felicita Foundation for the Arts, hints at both the beauty and the weaknesses of the artist’s “aesthetic of excess.”

It tells of Dominguez’s graduate thesis show, for which he designed and constructed an entire dining room, from the table and its dinnerware down to the chairs and rug. Dominguez’s mother assisted the artist by doing the exacting work of hand-embroidering the tablecloth. When she had finished, she sent the tablecloth back to her son with a note that said, “Maybe next time, instead of More is More, how about Enough is Enough?”

The current show includes that dining room ensemble as well as a bedroom set, bathroom fixtures, lamps, dressers and sculptural tableaux, made primarily of ceramics and embossed metals.

Dominguez, a native and current resident of New Mexico, answered his mother’s note on the ceramic base of one of the dining room stools. “Thanks Mom for your help,” he wrote, among the colors and patterns adorning the stool. This snippet of domestic dialogue lends a flavor to Dominguez’s work that appeals directly tothe nostalgic nerve. Like comfort food, these home furnishings and accessories affirm the special bond between heart and hearth.

Enhancing the physical environment of the home also enhances the social, emotional and even the moral environment of the place, reasoned followers of the turn-of-the-century Arts and Crafts movement in the United States and Britain, and Dominguez’s work embodies some of that same optimism.

But it is far from quaint or morally constrained. Dominguez is an imaginative artist whose work adds valuable evidence to the case for the legitimacy of ceramic sculpture. His plates, trays, cups, lamps and dressers are fully functional--and thus quite accessible--but they also are sculptural objects in their own right.

In “Black Velvet Fish Dinner,” for instance, Dominguez suspends brightly glazed ceramic fish over equally vibrant ceramic foliage planted in a bed of black stones, all encased in a glass-faced cabinet. The scene can be deconstructed to serve the fish it refers to. All of the decorative elements also function as trays, plates or cups.

For the dining room ensemble, Dominguez has stacked each sitter’s dinnerware to resemble an exuberant blossom. Disassembled, the pieces are usable, though slightly clumsy and oversized.

By personalizing the mundane and rendering the functional sculptural, Dominguez plants his work firmly on both sides of the fence that distinguishes form from function, and this duality is cause for some intrigue. But, to quote the artist’s own mother, sometimes enough is enough. Dominguez doesn’t just lend each of his works dual identities, he saturates their surfaces with color, pattern and imagery that exhausts the eye as often as it entrances it.

Such ebullience, energy and defiance of restraint can be refreshing, as in Dominguez’s lushly patterned bathroom sinks and toilet. But they can also sink into kitschy decoration--as with his headboard painting of a deer and rose--and shallow critique, as with the “Faceted Fantasies” vanity littered with cut-out magazine pictures of fashion models.

The most affecting of Dominguez’s works are also the most personal and autobiographical. A glass-topped night table containing small, personal artifacts, and a door, faced with a quilt-like collage of hammered metals and postcards sent to the artist, possess a warmth and depth that the busy, more decorative works can’t muster. In the more personal works, Dominguez establishes another fruitful duality, beyond that fusing form and function. Here, he adds actual meaning to the obvious pleasure of the works’ construction.

Felicita Foundation for the Arts, 247 S. Kalmia St., Escondido, through July 13. Hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday.

CRITIC’S CHOICE The David Zapf Gallery has expanded into a larger space at 2400 Kettner Blvd., the gallery that first housed the now-defunct Anuska Galerie and, more recently, the Calhoun Gallery. Zapf’s inaugural show at the new space celebrates the gallery’s expanded size by featuring nearly 50 works by artists who have previously appeared in solo and group shows at the gallery’s former space down the block.

Especially strong are Mario Uribe’s charcoal drawings on the theme of war, Patssi Valdez’s luminous serigraph of a dressing table and the ever-exquisite drawings of Eugenie Geb. Also on the gallery’s rich roster of talents are Raul Guerrero, Poupee Boccaccio and David Baze, whose solo show opens there May 17. The current show is open Fridays and Saturdays from noon to 5 p.m. and by appointment (232-5004) through Saturday.