Born in California, Michael Lucero’s personal history and art reflect the cultural mix that is the peculiar heritage of this young part of America. His ancestry includes Hispanic and Native American as well as both Catholic and Jewish influences, and his early memories of his grandparents home in Las Vegas, NM, reappear repeatedly in his later work. As a child, he would explore the reminders of the ancient civilizations in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains; as an adult, he continues to find inspiration in the histories of other civilizations and their art.

Lucero works primarily in series, using both clay and metal and more recently found objects to create his art. His art mixes the historical with the contemporary and personal to foster a new way of looking at a familiar object, pulling together seemingly disparate elements that form a whole.

“I didn’t want to use clay indiscriminately, but rather through its use allude to symbolic meanings of the material, the history of the material. I thought clay-vessel, clay-bones. I wanted to refer to the ancient and to speak of it in contemporary terms.”

— Michael Lucero