The Human Condition: The Stephen and Pamela Hootkin Collection Sept. 2014 | Page 29

lost during the dream state of travel in the spirit world.

bizarre shapes, and in many ways acted the fool while

When the soul is trapped (captured) it does not return.

making the most profound ceramics of his generation.

This results in illness and maladies. In the Pacific Northwest,
shamans form hollow amulets from bear femurs to catch
the errant soul for its return journey to the human body. In
Lucero’s sculpture the vessel is literal: a pot. One wonders
whether the souls were delivered to their hosts or whether,
being upside down, the souls are still trapped inside.
Many of Lucero’s works have the function of soul or dream
catching; it is in many ways his central inspiration, not just
from his time in the Northwest. Using pots in this work ties
the sculpture, albeit obliquely, to the culture and material

Lucero’s glaze colors mesh with those of Ohr, whose
color sense was wild and inventive, whereas the PreColumbus figures were never glazed but painted in a
variety of earth-toned slips or with non-ceramic pigments.
However, archeologists allow that some ancient figures
may have been close to Lucero’s fired polychromy, but
that over time the organic pigments have eroded and
largely disappeared leaving only earth tones of slip and
clay behind.

of ceramics, but not with the same intent as a potter. He

One of Ohr’s most famous works is a pair of top hats

is using pots as iconic objects in a sculptural realm.

entitled Nine O’Clock in the Evening (in pristine condition)

Lucero plays the ceramic card again with his PreColumbus figures, arguably the most admired and
popular of all of his series. His color turns these revered
antiquities into harlequins, a polite way of again saying
clowns. The clown is an important figure in art and
in early civilization; it is the jester, the prankster, and
in Indian culture the mischievous and sometimes
malicious, malevolent kachina. It’s not kid’s stuff. Many
artists, from Marcel Duchamp and Pablo Picasso to Ai
Weiwei, have played this role or captured the image.
To this list of pranksters, one can add the so-called Mad
Potter of Biloxi, George E. Ohr who Lucero co-opts,
blending two threads of history, Pre-Columbus figures
and America’s first great ceramic artist. Ohr, active in
the first decade of the twentieth century, performed

and Three O’Clock in the Morning (ripped and torn
after what was clearly a wild night on the town), both
circa 1900. Lucero’s Man with Ohr Hat, from the series
Pre-Columbus (1991) wears the latter. In Man Balancing
a Vessel with Eye, from the series Pre-Columbus (1992)
an Ohr-like pot is comically placed on the head of the
figure but the eye changes the mood. In many cultures
the eye is a sacred symbol, so the jokester becomes a
shaman and indeed the roles were often entwined.
If the Pre-Columbus figures were considered Lucero’s most
admired series, the greatest competition would be from the
series Reclamation. This multimedia series has an edge of
genius. Lucero rescued pieces of broken garden sculpture,
mainly concrete, and made them whole with ceramic
additions, like a maker of glazed prosthetic devices.

stunts, grew a long moustache that he would comb into

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