The Constant Artist: CHAC co-founder Stevon Lucero's work lives on

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NORTHGLENN, Colo. — In the Northglenn Arts center, about 15 miles north of Denver, a white hallway has transformed into a temple of "metarealism." It’s the first public exhibit at the center, which opened last fall, and it pays tribute to an artist who made an indelible mark on the Denver arts scene: Stevon Lucero.

One of the 10 founding members of the nonprofit Chicano Humanities and Arts Council, or CHAC, Stevon was a giant in the city's art world for decades. He helped create CHAC in 1978 after he and other Chicano artists in Denver felt their art wasn’t receiving the attention it deserved.

Stevon passed away Nov. 28 of last year at 72 years old.

In an interview with Rocky Mountain PBS, Stevon’s wife, Arlette — CHAC’s education director and a gifted artist in her own right — described her late husband as the Diego Rivera to her Frida Kahlo.

“He was the big artist, the constant artist,” Arlette said of Stevon. “The one who would paint every single day, the one who would go big. He had ideas constantly.”

She recalled instances of coming downstairs at 6 a.m. to discover that Stevon never came to bed. Instead, he had been up all night painting, sometimes working on as many as 11 canvases at once.

“So he would be flooded with ideas and so they all came at once," Arlette explained, "and he had to get them down before he lost them.”

At about a dozen paintings, each with an accompanying poem from Stevon, the exhibit in Northglenn is only a small sample of the artist’s oeuvre, but the work spans across many decades; some of the poems are from the early 1970s.

The exhibit, which is on display through the end of March, also provides an illuminating look at Stevon’s style over the years, particularly his penchant for working in metarealism, a style he developed in the early 70s. Arlette described metarealism as the “externalization of interior realities.”

Arlette Lucero gestures toward one her husband's paintings titled "Adam."

“This is the stuff that was inside of him. It’s not surrealism so much,” Arlette said. “So he was able to take these ideas that were in his head — these images — and just put them on canvas.”

Looking into Stevon’s paintings can feel like looking into a dream. Much of his work includes cosmic and spiritual landscapes and other-worldly topography. Some of the work, though, is more clearly grounded in Stevon’s Catholic faith, like his paintings of the burning bush or the crucifixion of Jesus.

“I love the fact that we can show it to the world, or at least this part of the world,” Arlette said of Stevon’s exhibit, joking that it also cleared up space in her house. “And other people can see maybe what CHAC selfishly took for themselves. And now we can spread it out to different places.”

The early beginnings, and recent losses, of CHAC

Arlette met Stevon about a year or two after he co-founded CHAC, she said.

She had seen one of Stevon’s pieces in a newspaper — a painting called "Rainbow Boy" — and it made such an impact on her that she cut out the photo and asked her mom if she wanted to go and meet Stevon at an art show.

Stevon Lucero was featured on Rocky Mountain PBS in 1980 during a program called "Season Ticket."

Arlette and her mother went to the show, hoping to speak to Stevon, but Arlette’s nerves and the crowd of people surrounding Stevon made that difficult.

“He was talking to [fellow CHAC co-founder] Carlos Sandoval and some other people, and not once did he have a break with people talking to him,” Arlette recalled.

Stevon was known for holding court at CHAC galleries, where it was common for him to have a rapt following of friends and fans eager to chat with him and seek advice, which he was happy to give.

That may be the most powerful part of Stevon’s legacy, Arlette said. “Your biggest impact is maybe not your sales — everybody loves your art, your prints go like crazy — but maybe it’s just when you talk and when people come to see you, and you give them your messages,” she recalled telling him.

Those messages date back decades. In 1980, Rocky Mountain PBS profiled Stevon and his fellow CHAC founding members Jerry Jaramillo and Fred Sanchez in a program called "Season Ticket,” which focused on arts and culture in Colorado.