Dominguez, Cesar

Cesar Elias Dominguez Nuñez was born in a hospital in Nuevo Casas Grandes in June, 1961. His mother took him back home to Mata Ortiz the next day and that’s where he grew up. His first job out of secondary school was as a grade school teacher for the Chihuahua al Pacifico Railroad. He was 16. His employment contract required that he report for work, then go to school and earn the credentials necessary to do the job. He began university in Durango in 1978 and finished in Ciudad Juarez in 1981. By 1984, though, he was an established member of the first generation of Mata Ortiz potters.

Today, Cesar and Gaby Dominguez are a husband and wife team of potters living in Nuevo Casas Grandes. They moved there for Cesar’s job as a schoolteacher and because there were better schools available for their kids. Like many husband and wife teams, she builds and polishes the pots and he sands, paints and fires them.

Their repertoire is huge, running the gamut from differently colored, intricately decorated stone-polished ollas to plates, to bowls, to marbleized pottery. Their decorating style is equally varied, from painted images of various animals to intricate fine line geometric designs to Paquimé Revival patterns. They have had particular financial success with painting bright geometrics on glossy black graphite backgrounds.

Cesar and Gaby traveled to the Idylwild Arts Academy in California for several years to continue giving the summer pottery workshops that Juan Quezada Sr. used to give there.

In 2018 Cesar earned the First Place prize in the New Properties division at the annual Concurso Ceramica de Mata Ortiz. In 2017 he’d earned a First Place prize in the Non-traditional Color, with or without design, category at the Concurso.