Saturdays in the Studio

March 25th, 2010 at 12:08pm malikagreen

Modern Chopin (in progress)

A couple more weeks have flown by in the Open Studios, and I am enjoying the dialogue from visitors, from discussions about shoes with feelings (shy and awkward shoes,) to discussions about the difference between being a designer and a maker, and how they can be combined but being one doesn’t make you necessarily the other. I spent an early afternoon at the museum with April, a shoemaker from Australia, looking at the show and discussing the craft of shoe-making and our experiences. She makes custom shoes, and her passion is making shoes for the circus, which is a thriving business in her country. The art of shoe-making is one of those things that takes years to become an expert at. Shoe making has been predominantly been a male dominated field, and traditionally in factories people had one specialty they became the expert at.  An expert cutter became that way because he did the same process every day for 30 years. My discussion with April lead to the agreement that we are trying to do it all, so we are pretty good at many processes, but not experts yet.  Sometimes it can be frustrating but then I see how far my craft has come.  It was nice to pick her brain since our training and experiences are different.  I use the form and craft of shoe-making to express my art, while having gone to art school, and studied design and fine arts in both graduate and undergraduate school. I learned shoe-making in undergrad, and since then I have continued in my own studio practice, with a lot of trial and error. Every piece I make has been one of a kind, with its own issues and problem solving.  No matter how fluent I feel in a process or technique there is always something to improve upon.  Through the advice of April, I’m going to try a different approach to pattern making, with the hope that it will make the fit more accurate with the translation of 2D to 3D, from paper to leather.  I always start with a sketch and then translate it to the last.  Part of the process is taping it up, then drawing the pattern on the tape.  The next step is cutting the pattern off, laying it on thick paper, and redrawing it with seam and lasting allowances.  It would seem like the pattern would be perfect because the form is taken directly from the last, however I always run into some discrepancies when I translate the pattern to leather, and “last” it, due in part to the difference in material properties.  I am excited to try a new method April told me about, it should help with accuracy of the lines.

It is my hope to continue a dialogue with April and shoemakers like her, to bring this art into the current times, improve my own skills, out of the shadow of the historical male footwear designer/master maker. Hope to see you on Saturdays in the Open Studios!

Entry Filed under: in the studio