Michael Lucero

by Mark Richard Leach

This volume presents two decades of Michael Lucero's glazed ceramic, bronze, and mixed media sculptures, including such series as the Dreamers, Pre-Columbus, New World, and Reclamations. While at first glance his work appears to be a vigorous example of contemporary ceramic sculpture with a background in 1960s California art and a foreground in New York eclecticism, in fact his figurative forms borrow liberally and wittily from the history of art of various cultures, including pre-Columbian, Native American, European, Afro-Carolinian, and the vernacular and popular media. The imagery that slides in and out of the complex glazes of this master of the ceramic medium is art about art and about self. The consistent strength of the work comes from a fusion of ceramic tradition with sculptural innovation, and from a combination of extraordinarily fine technique, keen wide-ranging intelligence, and the resonance brought to bear by past associations, cultures, and use.