:: BACKGROUND

Background Arte Calidad Cultural Institute, a non-profit organization, is the brainchild of Los Angeles paper maché artist, Tony Dominguez. It was established in East Los Angeles in 1994 after a decade of manufacturing piñatas and large paper mache figures, known as Judas or Mojigangas. Arte Calidad is now dedicated to producing paper maché in a more contemporary light, resurrecting an old craft using traditional techniques and applying them to the new work being produced. Arte Calidad has developed into a brisk, high profile business with clients that include Coca Cola, McDonald’s, Kaiser Permanente, Ford Motor Company, Konami Digital Entertainment, Home Depot, NBC/Telemundo, as well as numerous state and local organizations. Arte Calidad has grown along with its clients' needs, offering stage props, stage design, product design and manufacturing specializing in the art of mold making and fiberglass casting. Arte Calidad employs over a dozen artists. It has reinvigorated the East Los Angeles artistic community, most notably in the traditional Mexican fine arts. The combined experience and expertise created by the diversity within Arte Calidad brings years of quality art production surpassed by none.

:: TONY DOMINGUEZ--Founder

After 12 years as a baker, Tony Dominguez worked as a production supervisor for Cinema Secrets (a Hollywood prop company) where he collaborated in such films as Dracula, Water World, Apollo XIII, Casper, Barbwire, The Mask and Stargate among others. Since 1994, he started producing piñatas for retail businesses. Soon after, he realized there was a growing demand for Latino art productions and he expanded his services to include paper maché. Through the expansion of his company, his desire to provide a creative outlet for the youth within the community developed into a way of life for those same youth, to show them that with their artistic skills, their dreams of success could become a reality. The same youth that would come after school as volunteers to help on paper maché projects, were now coming as employees who were receiving wages to help sustain themselves and provide a new source of income for their families. He felt a responsibility for his apprentices, having experienced the same difficulties when growing up in East Los Angeles. The expansion into paper maché led to the founding of Arte Calidad. As Arte Calidad, Tony Dominguez and his young workers targeted the biggest Latino entertainment productions, they also expanded into mainstream concerts and events. Today, Dominguez is said to be the "general de papel mache...the greatest paper mache artist in the country, if not the world," and Arte Calidad the "premier papier mâche and piñata makers in L.A. (and maybe the country)." Los Angeles Times, Sunday May 7, 2000. Tony Dominguez, as Arte Calidad’s founder, has also been recognized by KCET as a Local Hero of the Year in 2002. The founding of the Arte Calidad Cultural Institute is the natural progression of Arte Calidad’s commitment to mentoring and working with youth to maintain and modernize the tradition of paper mache art and other Mexican art forms.