Above: 'Eye Candy' and 'Black Panther'.
Yeah, it’s amazing what you were able to create—it doesn’t seem forced at all, either. Did you set out to make faces or a body, or is that just how it ended up? That’s just what the shoes spoke to you?
In the beginning of the process, back in the late 80s or 90s I had a show in Philadelphia, and I wanted to make a bodysuit—my friend had given my five pairs of his sneakers and I needed so many more to cover the entire bodysuit, these were high-top, quality sneakers, I wanted the wearer to bounce up and down and see the shoes kick. So I went to a thrift store and I saw the high-heeled shoes. So, right away I switched from sneakers to high heels. I didn’t know what I was going to make with them, but I knew they had great potential because they had great color, they had great shape, great history, great symbolism. I collected probably around 100 pairs at that time, and I played with them for about a month or two before I was able to recognize that the stiletto heel could be like a fang. And that led to the face aspect of it.
Now, at that time I made a chair out of high-heeled shoes because of Imelda Marcos, she had so many shoes, she was the wife of the President of the Philippines, so I made a throne for Imelda out of high-heeled shoes. And I made two faces, not masks for the wall but free-standing faces, and then many years went by, but in 2005 I received a fellowship at the University of Georgia—I was on campus for four years, they gave me a stipend, etc, but I didn’t take any art supplies with me, not even paintbrushes. So while sitting at my empty studio there, I said, ‘Maybe I’ll take up the shoes again.’ So I went to the local thrift store and told them that I wanted to make things out of shoes and that I would buy every shoe they had for fifty cents a pound, and they gave me like a million shoes, and the University of Georgia paid for them all at fifty cents a pound. So I continued with the shoes in 2005 with no real intention in mind. By the time this show came along, I knew I could make faces out of shoes—so I intended to make faces, I just didn’t know what the faces would look like.
I would go into my studio and be confronted by rows and rows and tables and table of shoes, and I don’t know what my intention is going to be, but I know I’m going to be there for three hours playing with the shoes. And some shoes suggest, perhaps a very long heal or a platform shoe might suggest a body, where as a pump might suggest a nose or an ear. So I let the shoes lead me to the final result.
It’s interesting that it started out as sneakers and became high heels, because I feel like right now a lot of people who used to wear high heels are now wearing sneakers instead. You said the high heel has a lot of symbolism and power, what do you think those are?
The high heel for some women becomes a power shoe. This morning, I was at my fiancé’s house and she gets up to go to work and I could hear her shoes coming down the hallway. It’s almost like the drum announcing the coming of the king or queen. Even today with her colleagues it’s like she can say she’s high because she’s wearing the high-heeled shoes. Those are some of the more positive symbolisms of the high-heeled shoe, but it also has the opposite suggestions as well. It could inhibit one’s ability to run. And nowadays, with the branding and the depending on the maker of the shoe, it becomes a status symbol related to economics, like, ‘Oh, she’s wearing Jimmy Choo,’ or whatever. And the designers sometimes do things to the shoes to suggest power or domination.