Wearable Sculptures called Shoes

February 23rd, 2010 at 05:13pm malikagreen

I just completed my second Saturday as an Open Studio Artist, and am invigorated and ready for next week!

My favorite question so far was a man asking me, “Why shoes?”  To which I replied, “why not?”  It’s difficult to describe a passion and compulsion to create.  Shoes are familiar, common, objects, but for me they are my art.    I aim to transform the shoes identity, so art becomes part of the function of the shoe.  Shoes are structural objects which stand alone, unlike garments, though they are transformed by the addition of the body and movement.

One of the pairs I am currently working on in the studio is inspired by Venetian 16th century high chopin’s, or “forbidden platforms,” which were banned and regulated for being too high and provocative.  Chopins were a huge fashion craze and status symbol, a lady had to have servants to help her walk in her tiltering, upwards sometimes of 30″ platform shoe.  To me this is interesting since shoes in their most basic form, protect our feet from the ground and dirt, symbolically from the mundane of everyday life.  By lifting themselves so far into the sky, were these Venetian ladies trying to inject themselves into the heavens?  Also by raising themselves up, they draw attention to themselves and their sensual beauty by being so tall and with their swaying, tilting walk, and showing off their status.  Either way, it was quite a scandal.

It’s hard to understand the context of this society from our standpoint today, but I am intrigued by the idea of the forbidden platform.  Even though the context is different now, you see platform shoes everywhere, and roads aren’t so muddy nowadays, I hope to touch on the spirit of the fashion with my design.

Hope to see you in the studio!

Entry Filed under: in the studio