Domingos Totora
Domingos’ roots are deep. He’s an old soul in a contemporary world. Enter his circular stone house with a crackling fire, and you’ll be served a tray of warm pão de queijo and cafezinho. One of a dozen rescue dogs will warm your feet as you relax against a sheepskin throw. Then he’ll open up about his craft. It’s not just his vocation, but his identity. His work is the manifestation of the soil from which it is shaped.
As an educator and art teacher, Domingos has a naturally patient demeanor and childlike curiosity. He’s fascinated with Mother Earth And Father Time. The elements in which his homeland is so rich are his muse.
He observes the aging effects of weather on colonial Portuguese architecture, the 300-year-old hand-laid cobblestones called paralelepípedos , and the beauty it brings out over time, like a buffing to a fine finish.
Inspired by his natural surrounds, he rarely travels from the bucolic village of Maria da Fé in Minas Gerais, although he did for a time to formally study design. But the ancient shrines, winding streams, lush vineyards, and mountain passes are the only world he wants and needs; the living vignettes telling him what to create.
He listens closely and responds.
