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 grandparent’s 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. “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.” 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. 1. Mark Richard Leach. “A Conversation with Michael Lucero.” Michael Lucero. New York: Hudson Hills Press, 1996.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT – MICHAEL LUCERO “I don‟t have to weld or chisel wood or carve stone to be able to make sculpture…there were all these wonderful alternatives…[Using clay I could] make something that was [as] justified or legitimate as anyone else…yet have my own identity felt through the work.”1 “For me, the idea of reclamation seemed to come at a time when found objects interested me more and more. I frequent thrift shops, antique shops, antique malls, and antique fairs. This habit of mine might be considered my way of attempting a social study of American culture, of other cultures, of this conglomerate of all sorts of things from different times and different places. Different worlds collide in these places, and that really interests me.”