Gallery puts cartographer's art on the map, too

By Zenaida Serrano Espanol
Advertiser Staff Writer

Blaise Domino is best-known in Hawai'i for his Map of the Sandwich Isles — the best-selling image in the 17-year history of Pictures Plus, says company owner Kent Untermann.

The historical cartographer of Diamond Head was once a hippie from San Francisco, however, and he has the psychedelic art to prove it.

Domino, 62, will showcase dozens of his works at an exhibit, "Moments of Becoming," Friday through May 19 at the Law Office of Tony Serra gallery in San Francisco.

Serra, by the way, is the defense lawyer who has defended accused drug dealers, Black Panthers and Native American activists, and whose work was dramatized in the Hollywood movie "True Believer." The lawyer's brother is well-known California sculptor Richard Serra.

The artist's pieces are "perceptual art," Domino said, "which has to do with the unconscious perceiving of the more subtle levels of the manifest world."

Domino started with drawings he originally did in the 1960s, enlarged them into black-and-white serigraphs, then painted them with acrylics and fluorescent pigment. These were then digitalized and enlarged. The exhibit will feature dozens of works in different stages of the process.

Meanwhile, images of Domino's less-subtle artworks — his local maps, including those of O'ahu and Maui — continue to sell successfully at stores such as select locations of Pictures Plus, DFS Hawai'i and Martin & MacArthur. For details about the exhibit or Domino's artwork, call 737-3777.

Reach Zenaida Serrano Espanol at zespanol@honoluluadvertiser.com or 535-8174.