OLD TOWN — She calls herself Chicago's Queen of Tape.
Artist Anna Dominguez's medium is tape and she plows through dozens of rolls each month.
Dominguez etches out elaborate and detailed "tapings" that range from Chicago skyline shots to portraits of Major League Baseball players.
"Who knew?" the 26-year-old Gold Coast resident said. "Tape."
The obsession with tape — all kinds — started three years ago when Dominguez grew tired or painting and drawing.
"I thought, 'What can I do different?' So, I went to the store looking for paints and saw these colored tapes," she said.
That was in 2010.
The idea should have hit her earlier — her dad worked for 3M, which make all kinds of tapes, for 30 years.
"It's just funny that I've been around tape my whole life and I just came up with the idea," she said.
Dominguez's work adorns the walls of a number of celebrities' homes.
During the last summer Olympics, Dominguez created a scene of her favorite athletes volleyball stars Misty Elizabeth May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh Jennings and tweeted a photo of it to them.
"She was so impressed with it that her husband wanted one," Dominguez said.
May-Treanor's husband is Los Angeles Dodgers player Matt Treanor.
The tape queen's latest project spans the wall of Old Town's newest fitness studio dhFIT.
The studio's owner David Hardin also heard about Dominguez's work through Twitter and commissioned her to create a skyline resembling Vincent van Gogh's Starry Night.
"She's just incredible," Hardin said. "I've never seen anything like it."
Dominguez's biggest project to date are two commissioned pieces for The Scout bar in the South Loop.
Each piece, which measure about 8 by 10 feet, took up 28 rolls of tape.
The works took about two months of 70 hour weeks to complete.
"It was always a dream to do something that I love and never feel like I'm working," Dominguez said. "I have big dream and I always have."
Her art, she says, "takes me to a place where I can mellow out."
Dominguez's tape skills may also be taking her to New York in October to meet with Real Housewives of New York cast member Heather Thomson and her mother.
When Dominguez learned that Thomson's son was born with a liver disease, she created a piece of art for him, and it now hangs on his wall.
Ultimately, the Queen of Tape would like to open a gallery to display her art, but for now she is preparing for her second year at the Merchandise Mart's One of a Kind Show and Sale in early December.
The Duct Tape Company is paying the $2,500 for her to set up a booth.
"I would love to just do this for the rest of my life," she said. "I love it."
