Creating a Lasting Impression
ylie Lucero '60 has spent most of his life stirring creativity, spreading it amongst communities and creating understanding. And the world has become a much more colorful place because of it.
"I used to dream of having a million dollars," says Lucero, who graduated cum laude from CC and has a bachelor and a master of fine art from Yale University School of Art. "With that million, I would buy a wheel chair for my uncle, a piano for my father and I would open a large art program and develop artists."
He never got that million dollars and his father and uncle have passed on. Lucero, however, did become the director of the Harborview Art Center and coordinator of a visual arts program for 102 community centers of the New York City Housing Authority.
This native New Mexican has also chaired the School of Visual Arts Fine Arts Center, served as a community educator for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as an art coordinator for the Association of Hispanic Arts, and as an artist-in-residence for Studio in a School, Inc. In addition, he has taught art in Vermont, California and Colorado.
At the Harborview Arts Center, Lucero and other staffers run a mural painting program that aims to improve the quality of life in public housing while helping youngsters navigate an often perilous journey to adulthood.
In one year, center staff supervised 38 professional artists/educators who conducted more than 3,400 workshops in everything from mural painting to paper mache at 72 housing authority community centers.
In 1995, the Harborview Art Center received a national design award from the General Services Administration for implementing NYCHA Community Center participation in the African Burial Ground Mural project in New York City.
Lucero, who remembers himself as a "four-eyed, underage, under weight, immature, unsocialized runt" his first years at CC, fondly recalls the wooden ceiling arches and the overstuffed furniture of Bemis Taylor Hall, where he worked as a dishwasher, busboy and, later, host.
"I learned how to supervise people who were older, stronger and wiser than me," he says. "These lessons have stayed with me all my life and have contributed to whatever successes I have achieved in 35 subsequent years."
An Alice Bemis Taylor scholar, Lucero says, "I know that without the assistance of the Alice Bemis Taylor residence hall and scholarship legacy my life would never have been as fulfilling and enjoyable as it has unfolded over the years."
