Other People's Shoes

This painting of Garth Marriott's Hosoi Vans is part of a series of other peoples shoes. In a way I started this project over 22 years ago.

When I was a freshman at MICA in Jim Hennessey's Foundation Drawing class in 1986, we were to chose a series to work through in our homework. For some reason I chose shoes. I was board with the idea pretty quick so I started borrowing other peoples shoes. Since I started a new series of shoes. I started thinking about those old drawings. My mother found a pack of the drawings in her barn and sent them to me. Not a moment too soon. Some had been gnawed by mice to make bedding. Here are a couple that I liked.

I borrowed Council Nedd's Creepers. He had quite a few pairs of nice and very cool shoes. I was already friends with Council when I got to MICA because he was the only other freshman from my high school. Council left MICA but went on to become a Bishop in the Anglican Church.

Spoon Popkin used to wear those shoes that you could buy at the Chinese grocery for $3. They were black cloth with a hard red plastic sole. I borrowed a pair of her old beat up shoes for this drawing. I used heavy rough watercolor paper and painted a lot of it in my bathtub with ink and water.

Actually Jim Hennessey talked me out of quite a few of my drawings from that class. I wonder what became of them.