A few more shoes were pulled out of my cache to become something entirely different, each with their own story. Two were men's shoes, patterns on the side were the reason I bought them, fully intending to give them a new life as a piece of art. This first one is made with a porcelain doll head, a small lion head (pseudo door knocker), lamp parts, lion's foot for a table leg, ribbon, and clay beads (and of course a shoe). The clay work for the mane took a few days but was well worth it once painted and completed. I titled this one simply "Son" with the adult lion at the top of the shoe and younger (human lion form) at the bottom.
The next one is built with a paper weight that highly magnifies. Behind the paper weight is a face, taken from "The Invisible Man" puzzle toy. It's a bit disturbing to suddenly realize that you are looking at a see-through head, and it is only realized when you look at it from a certain angle. All the better in my opinion. He is hard to photograph without reflections, I did my best. The title is "The Path You Choose" largely because he reminds me of a soothsayer or diviner and the linear piece on top goes to a star. There is also another face, more like an owl's face, holding the round paper weight in its mouth.
And that was one funky shoe!
The woman's shoe includes parts of a trumpet, another porcelain doll head, and a wooden parrot that was made of wood but was in rough shape and needed sanded and repainted. Naming a piece can be a large struggle and this one defied any clever ideas I had. In the end she became "Just a Woman and Her Parrot".
In the end she reminded me of Catherine O'Hara as Delia Deetz in the movie Beetlejuice.
One of my favorite things about working with shoes is how they hang on a wall. I often call it skinny art and it's also the reason I like making wands, they can hang almost anywhere, in a corner, next to a door jam, next to a closet, above a lamp, etc...
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