Artist of the day: Artist of the Day, December 5, 2024: Michael Lucero, an American ceramics artist and sculptor (#2175)

Thursday, December 5, 2024

Artist of the Day, December 5, 2024: Michael Lucero, an American ceramics artist and sculptor (#2175)

Michael Lucero (1953) is an American ceramics artist and sculptor. Lucero works with multiple mediums and usually works in series.

Lucero was born in Tracy, California and attended Humboldt State University, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1975. He later attended the University of Washington in Seattle, where he earned a Master of Fine Arts. Soon after, he settled in New York when Minimalism was dominant in the art scene. Some of his work such as "Lizard Slayer," reflects that movement.

He taught briefly at New York University and the Parsons School of Design. In the late 1980s, he turned from polychrome clay to cast metal and then began to incorporate both mediums. Generally he sees his work as "reverence for high art, affection for folk art, nostalgia for nature, and curiosity about other cultures."

His work is included in private collections and some of the most important museum collections in the USA and abroad including the Museum of Art + Design, New York NY; Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse NY; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles CA; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York NY; National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea; The Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC; Chazen Museum of Art, Wisconsin; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco CA.

Michael Lucero’s painted clay sculptures are surreal blends of folk ceramic traditions, abstract painting, reptilian forms, body parts, and plant-like structures. “I really love to mix materials,” he says. “I truly believe that my world has informed my work and will continue to do so. I try to think of the material of clay as a metaphor and remind myself of the artifacts that we have in our culture that I can comment on with my work.” He incorporates different stylistic references from pre-Columbian, Native American, European, and American folk art traditions, combining classical art references with techniques and imagery traditionally excluded from the canon.

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