Articles Featuring Stevon Lucero

Colorado Artist Stevon Lucero
by Miguel Angel Castro
9 News Article January 25, 2002
From an early age, Stevon Lucero viewed things in life with a profound sense of spirituality and symbolism.

While growing up in the city of Laramie, Wyoming, Stevon Lucero remembers being very inquisitive and curious about spiritual themes. He began exploring the perception of reality and similar subjects.

During his high school years, after deeply concentrating on these themes, Stevon was seeing everything in a metaphoric way and was applying symbolism to practically everything around him. "I was a Symbolist without even knowing," Stevon remarks.

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Enfuse Magazine
Profile of Steven Lucero
Stevon Lucero is on a spiritual journey. More than a visual artist he is in truth, a philosopher artist. Each painting reflects a metaphor of his own internal dialogue between himself and God. Each piece tells a story, a story in which the ultimate intent and value lies in the future when people will have a greater understanding and appreciation for true spiritual art.
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Visions on Canvas
by Renee Fajardo ©2006
Read Five Magazine Article Issue 8
“Heaven is before you, but you can not see it. It is obscured by your vision of hell.”

Stevon Lucero is an artist. He has been painting what he sees, hears and experiences for nearly forty years. Five hundred years ago when the Spanish Conquistadors brought their priest to the “New World” (Mexico) where Lucero's ancestors were born, those like him would have been embraced with an open fire pit. That's what you do to heretics. Even by today's standards, Lucero could be considered a very dangerous man. When folks in Denver refer to him as the visionary Chicano artist, they aren't just whistling De Colores .

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Art for Life
By C.J. Janovy
Originally published by ©Westword 4-29-1999
The television is on, transmitting images from the Columbine High School shooting into the front room of the Lucero studios, at West 33rd and Tejon. The walls are covered with the blood reds, dusty blues and luminous golds of Stevon Lucero's and Arlette Lucero's artwork. Even after Arlette turns off the TV, she sees the connection between the electronic pictures from the other side of town and the paintings on her wall.
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A Breakthrough Exhibit at Museo
Renee Fajardo ©2006
Originally published in La Voz

If Chicanos have never left Aztlan, then it is because Atzlan evolved and progressed. In this context, the art in the show begins to take on a new meaning. Lucero's stunning and never before seen modern Aztec codice, Xocotl, perhaps embodies the spirit of the show most perfectly. The piece is about sacrifice and giving of one's self without fear. If we have not left Aztlan it is because we have made certain sacrifices and done so willingly.
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Photo by Miguel Angel Castro for 9 News

Photo by Arlette Lucero
Stevon presenting a print of the Aztec Calendar to Elizabeth Edwards at Rosa Linda's Resturant Cafe

Viva Chicano History
By Susan Froyd

Published in Westord ©Thursday, August 5, 2004
Though Lalo wasn't a fine artist, his spirit will certainly fly through the room Friday when the Old Timers..? Show opens at CHAC, now settled as a gallery on Santa Fe Drive, where it long stood alone, preceding the current influx of art venues in the neighborhood. Featuring works by six original CHAC artists -- Ernie Gallegos, Stevon Lucero, Jerry Jaramillo, Al Sanchez, Carlos Sandoval and the late Fred Sanchez -- who are linked together by their participation in a mural project dubbed "City Walls," Old Timers is an art exhibit on the surface, but a slice of history deep inside. CHAC, originally a multi-arts forum for Chicano literature, theater and fine art, coalesced shortly after these artists' work on the short-lived communal mural project ended, hampered by politics and a lack of funds.
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Photo by Todd Pierson for Five Magazine and Artist Interviews Magazine
Photo by Todd Pierson for Five Magazine and Artist Interviews Magazine

Stevon Lucero Awakens Universal Consciousness for All
by Renee Fajardo ©2006
Photos by Todd Pierson ©2006
Artist Interviews Magazine August 2006
Lucero, who was born in 1949, grew up in Laramie Wyoming amidst Wild West cowboys and Mexican rail road workers. He lived on the “wrong side of the tracks” where life was marked by poverty, violence and alcoholism. “We were just poor Mexican kids living in a redneck town” laughs Lucero. “I didn't even know I was a Chicano, a Mexican /American, or about my cultural traditions then. I was just trying to survive.”
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Booklover's Ball nets record $320,000 for children
By Joanne Davidson
Published in The Denver Post ©October 24, 2001

Arts and Letters of the Table was the theme for the Oct. 12  event, and 89 local artists, designers and architects created  decorative letters of the alphabet for the decor. Sculptor Kevin  Robb, for example, did an oriental-esque letter "k" with brush and  ink in a style similar to the signature on his pieces. Painter Stevon Lucero used oil on masonite for his Aztec-inspired "S" while muralist Edward Ruscha's pen-and-ink drawing of the slanting  letters "d," "p" and "l" resembled books in a bookcase.

Foothills Show is Three Exhibits in One
By M.S. MASON
Published in the Rocky Mountain News ©January 10, 1993

No art develops in a vacuum. The contemporary paintings of Denver artists Stevon Lucero and Emanuel Martinez in the second show, "Glyphs, Gods, and Heroes," owe a great deal to the cosmology of their Native American ancestors.

Lucero makes bright glyph-like paintings that incorporate the mythology of the ancients with his own mystical visions. They are clean and clear - sharp lines, bright, clean color - and engaging.

Paint the Town Brown
For these Chicano artists, home is where the art is.
By Harrison Fletcher
Article Published in WESTWORD ©April 24, 2003
At CHAC, artists have tackled everything from AIDS to homelessness. In 1992, Manzanares started the Chile Harvest Festival, which for five years featured traditional colonial art from New Mexico and southern Colorado, including santos, tin work, retablos and weaving. Later, CHAC invited taggers to create aerosol art and featured the Día de los Muertos altars of former gang members. CHAC has displayed everything from ironing-board saints to velvet Elvis paintings, from grandmas' pot holders to erotica exhibitions. And although this openness has led some critics to question the quality of the shows, others see the eccentricity as a strength.

"The people who are involved now are like the people who were involved initially," says Stevon Lucero. "It's an act of love."
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Exhibits Showcase Hispanic Art Shaped by Fusion of Cultures
By Sherri Vasquez
Published in the Rocky Mountain News ©April 15, 1996
Denver's Museo de las Americas, 861 Santa Fe Drive, recently acquired a wood replica of the calendar, now on display there. Created by Gerry Labbe, the sculpture has 4,400 pieces carved from 84 kinds of domestic and exotic wood.

The Museo, a major cultural resource since 1991, is mounting a 25-year retrospective of the career of Stevon Lucero. This prolific local artist incorporates a variety of influences in his work, including Pre-Columbian cultures and his own unique visualizations. Metarealism Works of Art: Stevon Lucero Paintings of Rare and Unusual Themes opens May 3 and continues through July 20. The Museo will host a preview reception at 5:30 p.m. May 2, and Lucero will present a slide lecture at 7 p.m. June 18 at the Denver Civic Theatre, 721 Santa Fe Drive.


LARASA volunteers honored
ByJoanne Davidson
Published by The Denver Post @October 11, 1994

At the 1994 Bernie Valdez Awards luncheon, held Friday at the downtown Hyatt Regency, LARASA presented original works of art to individuals and businesses whose donations of time and money have enabled LARASA to meet its mission of improving the quality of life for Colorado's Latino population.The artwork, commissioned by Vicorp Restaurants, was by Stevon Lucero, Meggan De Anza-Rodriguez, Daniel Luna Jr. and Judy Miranda. Recipients were Daniel Salazar (positive image); Everett Chavez (Latino humanitarian); Ken Salazar (public service); Rose Targa and Michelle Targa-Adams of Trevino Mortuary (business leadership); and Norwest Bank (corporate).

Latino artists do their part for 'History'
By Joanne Davidson
Published in The Denver Post @September 19, 2002

Thirteen of the region's best-known Latino artists were invited to  celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month by taking part in "Preserving  History Through Art," an exhibit and sale at the Wells Fargo Bank  Atrium, 1740 Broadway, through September.

Sharon Vigil, president of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, paused  before works created by Stevon Lucero, Carlos Fresquez and others  to let her 9-month-old granddaughter, Leah Breanna Camarena, take a  good look. "It's never to early to introduce them to art," Vigil  said.


Museo Provides Showcase for Lucero's Challenge to Viewer
By Mary Voelz

Published by The Rocky Mountain News ©June 9, 1996

Not quite surreal, not quite real, this is what artist Stevon Lucero calls meta-realism, his personal shorthand for the words metaphysical, fantastic and realism.

The Museo chose to feature Lucero, director Jose Aguayo said, as a sort of contrast to the Martinez retrospective last summer, a show fierce with pride and prejudice. Martinez's stylized depictions of everything that goes into the Chicano heritage draws heavily on cultures that came before.
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Denver to Discover Lost Civilization
By Hal Stoelzle

Published in the Rocky Mountain News © May 6, 1992
Artist Stevon Lucero paints a mural for the Denver Museum of Natural History's exhibit on the Aztecs. Due to open Sept. 26, Aztec: The World of Moctezuma will be the museum's most ambitious project. It also will place the museum squarely in the contentious reassessment of Columbus and the subsequent transformation of the New World.

An Artist of Unique Vision and Perspective
By Don Bain

Published in La Voz September 10, 2003

Stevon Lucero has followed the path of a true artist most of his life, over thirty years of it in the metropolis of Denver. He has produced a prolific body of work in three different styles” Neo-Precolumbian, Representational, and Metarealism.

Lucero was born and raised in Laramie, Wyoming in a family far removed from the typical Latino experience and community. Asked about his childhood, it becomes apparent he walked an arduous path in early life, but looks back upon it with a philosophical perspective. “I had friends, but I was a lonely kid. I can't say I was unhappy but just kind of dazed and confused. There was a lot of pain in my life,” he said. But he credits the difficulties of his youth as the source of the creative muse within him. “The great thing about art – it becomes a vehicle - to use art not just as a creative process, but as a way of resolving those energies within you. Art becomes the process by which you reveal these truths unto yourself and liberate yourself. Liberating yourself allows you to truly heal.
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Background for Aztec display is a work of art all by itself
Steven Rosen; Denver Post Art Critic
Published in the Denver Post ©August 18, 1992

By the time the exhibit "Aztec: The World of Moctezuma" opens Sept. 26 at the Denver Museum of Natural History, Stephen "Stevon" Lucero's monumental mural of a crowded Aztec marketplace will be visual background.   

In the foreground will be three-dimensional educational props - mannequins, and re-created Aztec baskets, fruits and vegetables and agricultural products. All that is what's known as "foreground." The foreground and painted background together form a diorama - a specialty of natural history museums.And after the show concludes on Feb. 21, his work very probably will be destroyed. Since it was painted on Sheetrock and Masonite, attached via screws to a metal framework at its corners, removal will be difficult if not impossible.
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Two Muralists Paint their own Heritage
By Joe B. Verrengia News Science Writer
Published in the Rocky Mountain News © May 6, 1992

Murals:Their artistic styles couldn't be more different, or their inspirations more alike.


Across the hall, muralist Stevon Lucero acts as if he's having a seizure.

His graying hair flops against his shoulders. Paint is smeared on his thick arms and the apron covering his belly. He strides back and forth the 20-foot scene of the bustling central marketplace, or tianquiztli, dabbing colors here and there on life-sized sketches of 125 Aztecas.

In Lucero's mural, farmers have spread their produce on the Aztec market's vast courtyard of hardpacked clay. They squat shoulder-to-shoulder with traders peddling exotic wares from the corners of the empire, as well as barbers, potters, weavers and porters for hire, creating a din that could be heard miles away. Towering above the market are the splendidly geometric twin temples of fire and rain, and beyond them the rugged mountains.
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Painting beyond mind, body, soul
by Cristina Frésquez
Published in El Seminario © January 11, 2007
Local Denver artist, Stevon Lucero, has been creating soul captivating visuals for 40 years, transporting people to his world of visions and enlightened thought. Since childhood, Lucero has experienced intense dreams and visions, venturing more then once into separate realities. Through these revelations and studies of metaphysical, philosophical, and historical books and tapes, he has been guided to create two unique art forms: Metarealism and Neo-Precolumbian art.
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Greeley Exhibit Showcases Culture
Rocky Mountain News ©April 25, 1993

The art of Stevon Lucero, a prolific professional artist whose credits include a mural at the recent Aztec exhibit at the Denver Museum of Natural History, is currently on exhibit at Michener Library on the UNC campus in Greeley. Also on display are the works of University of Northern Colorado faculty members Roberto Cordova and Genie Canales.
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Lucero Paints Powerful New Visualizations
Published in El Semanario May 2, 1996

In human psychology and in contemporary art, there is an area between the purely abstract and the purely realistic. This is the area in which Denver artist Stevon Lucero maneuvers, exploring the edges of his subconscious mind where thought begins to intrude on the real world. Out of images seen in dreams, visions and separate reality experiences, Lucero creates powerful painted metaphors.
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Teaching Spirituality through Art
By Toni Fresquez
Published by El Semanario February 13, 1997

When his career as an artist began, Lucero decided that whatever he decided to do in life, he would be the best at it. “One of the thing's that I was dealing with when I became an artist, as a young Chicano, you would look and never see ‘us,' we are marginal people – it's a white man's culture,” explained Lucero. “And I said whatever I do, I'm going to try to be so good at that, so I could break those barriers. Although it seemed egotistical in some people's eyes, my objective was to discover something in art - develop that, go through the process – the mythic process of which society puts you through – which I have lived and you have to have the intellectual construct – and the validation is your experience. If you can survive that and jump the right hoops in the mythic proposition, then you are allowed a place in history.”
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