On Charles Lucas

(The Transformation of Reason, by Charles Lucas)

“Everything in Nature is Serpentine…”

I have long admired the work of ceramic tile artist and sculptor Charles Lucas. I met Charles many years ago in Northwest Portland, when we were young hell-raisers on the lookout for good times in the bars and cafes of the old neighborhood.

In those heady days of cheap rent and long, beer-addled nights, we lived luxuriously bohemian lives. With little effort, we could afford to be artists first and proper citizens of the community second. Compromise was then unthinkable as we strived to take part in a rich artistic tradition, now a bitter-sweet memory.

Our generation is perhaps, in this technological age of instant gratification and 15 minute pigeonholes, the last to see things through “boho” eyes.

Lucas grew up in Chicago and developed an interest in art as a child. He dropped out of high school after his sophomore year and went the GED route. Rebellion was thick in the air for many during that era and Lucas took his place among the protesters. He still has the memory badge he earned as a 15 year-old in Grant Park, when Chicago’s Mayor Richard Daley unleashed the police on Vietnam War protesters during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Lucas survived that bloody riot with a few bumps and bruises before throwing himself into the social milieu of the city’s south side, where he practiced the benevolence he’d learned as a good Catholic youth by feeding the poor and meting out his own unique brand of mystical and political awareness.

The quest to dispense good will and change the status quo from the inside took him on a wending journey throughout the U.S., to ghettos in New England, Indianapolis, San Francisco, Denver, and finally, Portland.

In Portland, Lucas began working construction and remodeling jobs to pay the rent, while simultaneously mastering the demanding crafts of tile design and installation. Before long he had his own thriving business, with more work than he could handle alone. Whenever I hit a dry spot in my own often sketchy attempts to pay the bills, I could usually count on Lucas for a job. In this manner I learned to appreciate the artist’s expertise in all things ceramic—-particularly his ability to sculpt with clay.

These days painting rather than sculpting is Lucas’s priority, while still involving his ceramic mantra. The thirty-five paintings on ceramic in Ubiquitous Serpentine might be, aside from a clear effort to paint pictures of the circular forces of Nature, a metaphor for the long and serpentine road every artist is engaged with throughout his or her career.

“Everything in Nature is serpentine,” Lucas says. “I’ve attempted to capture that feeling in these paintings.”



TS