SAN DIEGO — Domino toppling — it sounds like a kids' game.
To DeMond Nason, 42, and other adult aficionados, it is anything but that.
All his life Nason, who was born in National City and graduated from the San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts, had turned to art as his creative and therapeutic outlet — tole painting, ceramics, clay, watercolors, drawing, photography ...
Then he discovered dominoes.
In 2017, he stumbled across YouTube clips of domino drops. He listened to the soft bump of the cascading domino bricks and found it peaceful and soothing: "It was just beautiful to me."
Nason vowed to participate in a domino drop. He enrolled in a workshop with domino artist Paul Nelson, an Annapolis, Maryland, computer programmer. Nelson then invited Nason to help build a massive domino layout on the lobby floor of the Maryland Science Center for Baltimore's Domino Day. It was an intricate chain reaction project with a Maryland theme.
For a week, he helped transform precisely spaced dominoes into a field of Black-eyed Susans (the state flower), the Maryland flag, the logo of Domino Sugar, which is manufactured in Baltimore, and much more. The entire panorama took only about three minutes to topple.
"I fell in love with the artistry of it," Nason says. "It's like medication because you're focused on stacking them and making sure they don't fall." But the goal, of course, is to make sure they do fall.
He has learned not to wear baggy pants or shirts with cuffs which could catch on a domino and prematurely send an elaborate layout down the path to destruction. "You have to wear tight clothing," he cautions.
But the beauty of it is: "If it falls over, it's not the end of the world. I can put it back together again."
On Wednesday, Nason's domino construction skills will be highlighted on national TV when he and two teammates, the "Dominators," compete against other domino building trios in the debut of "Domino Masters," a 9 p.m. ET Fox TV series that follows "The Masked Singer."
San Diegan Farah Bajwa, 39, is a member of another of the 16 competing teams and will be appearing in the fourth Fox episode.
Another participant with strong San Diego ties is Danica McKellar, one of the three judges. The La Jolla native became a household fixture in her TV role as Winnie Cooper in "The Wonder Years" and later in the Hallmark movies.
But the actress also is a prolific author of math books geared to making math fun and fashionable for middle school girls. In conjunction with co-judge Steve Price, a YouTube video posted last November showed 1,000 copies of her math book, "Ten Magic Butterflies," toppling in an elaborate chain reaction that went more than a minute. Price works as a professional domino and chain reaction engineer for TV shows and commercials.
McKellar says her role as a judge is two-fold: to examine the math, physics and engineering skills involved in each build and to evaluate the story each construction tells.
"One of the things I love about dominoes is that they combine a love of science with a love of entertainment using math and physics and engineering to create exciting experiences. That's what I've been doing my best to do with my books all these years." says McKellar, who is about to release a new book, "Double Puppy Trouble."
"I grew up watching 'The Wonder Years,'" Nason says, adding that walking on the stage with Winnie Cooper was a thrill. He, too, has acting experience, having left San Diego to go to the Boston Conservatory and move on to Brooklyn to sing and act in some touring Broadway shows and Off Broadway productions.
People may refer to dominoes dropping as a hobby, but Nason calls it an art form.
During the "Domino Masters" series, contestants are assigned a building theme and given kinetic devices to incorporate in the design and trigger the chain reaction domino collapse. Nason prides himself in thinking "outside the box," thanks to his theater background.
The Fox TV episodes were filmed in a hangar at the Santa Monica Airport. Nason describes the giant layout space as his canvas and the multi-colored dominoes as his paint palette.
"You get to look at your work and admire it, and then you get to move on and never see it again," he laughs.
For Nason, though, domino toppling goes beyond being a form of art and therapy. "In dominoes," he says, "there are not that many people of color." He has a goal of increasing diversity in the field.
That's why he chose two Black team members, engineer Breenae Washington and personal trainer Michael Carrasquillo.
"Being raised in an African American community, inclusion and diversity are super important to me," Nason says. "We created this powerhouse team of people of color creating art and showing children of color that you can do this."
The competing teams also are amazingly diverse. One is a trio of rocket scientists. Another has construction workers. Bajwa's all-female team is called "Wonder Women."
Whether the "Dominators" or "Wonder Women" prevail in the elimination rounds to win the competition remains to be seen.
Whatever happens, Nason plans someday to return here to the Fleet Science Center, where he spent a lot of time as a child, and spend a week setting up a Balboa Park-themed domino drop.
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