New Washington DC Art Show Includes My Shoe Art

My art is now on display on Capitol Hill in a small art museum. Over the past year I’ve donated several of my shoe art prints to the Girls Gotta Run Foundation, Washington, DC to help them raise money. The Executive Director, Pat Ortman, regularly holds art shows, mostly in the Washington, DC area at some beautiful venues. These shows have included my artwork. This summer they have a show at the beautiful Sewall-Belmont House and Museum across the street from the Supreme Court Building. 

Check out these photos of the opening on June 18 and see if you can spot my work. Keep looking down the page and it will be much easier to spot the photo of Katie Couric in attendance at her VIP Reception. Even better, the art sells and I’ve developed a small but important following for my work and the foundation. I’m happy to help them out. My shoe art seems to fit in well with the theme of the shows.

Shoe Art in Washington, D.C.

The latest sale of my work is at the Girls Gotta Run Foundation art show at Strathmore Mansion.

This is the first show of my work outside of California and I a so happy my artwork sold on the opening night. I will continue to donate my artwork to Girls Gotta Run and wish them all my best.

How Did I Get Started With The Shoe Art?

No, I don’t have a high heel fetish. My artwork has taken me to many places of interest and the shoes are no exception. As a young man traveling in Europe I often stopped to look into shop windows and admire the beautiful displays. The displays themselves seemed like a work of art to me. Sometimes the window display would draw me in and to my astonishment the stores were often tiny and the shelves did not have near the selection I imagined based on the size and complexity of the window display. Somehow the window looked nicer than inside the store itself.

On one memorable occasion I was drawn to a Roman shoe store and I could not help but notice the beauty and complexity of the display and decided to photograph it. There was one major problem: The window had a brown tinted finish to help keep the store cool. The human eye corrected for the tint but my camera thought different. The resulting digital photo was exactly what the camera saw and I knew I would have to do something special to correct, and later, to enhance the photograph.

That one picture led me to what I now call Brush Stroke Photography to correct for the tint and the store turned out to be one of Rome’s high fashion shoe retailers. Several of my better shoe photographs came to my mind when I look at the way the shoes are displayed, line up, the colors mixed, and sometimes shoes even sparkle. When all that comes together, I can’t resist taking a picture.

About.com article on my shoe art

Today About.com’s guide to shoes Desiree Stimpert wrote this very nice article about my artwork. Of course I am most grateful for the kind words and the fact she purchased two of my pieces: one from my shoe art gallery and Times Square, New York City. Great choices on two artworks I enjoyed creating.

The About.com guide to shoes is an excellent resource containing lots of shoe articles and links to related sites. You have got to check out the What’s Hot link box to see shoes like these from Guess:

Black & White #7

My favorite pieces of shoe art by others is not necessarily Andy Warhol. While his work is inspiring I like the ones containing both a shoe and purse. That is what prompted me to start my own work in this direction. This image is not for sale but is part of a series I created with an Italian leather set in black and white. More of this to come.

Manolo Blahnik shoes here soon

Manolo’s shoes will soon be featured in my art. Recently he was interviewed in Orange Coast magazine and told the story of his growing up in the Canary Islands on a banana plantation. Now he is featured in the Design Museum’s web site where they give even more details of his life and career. I love a good biography and Manolo’s story is a good one. Now I need his shoes in my art collection. Anybody have a suggestion on a pair that might work best for my art? In the meantime this detail of an image from my web site has a burnt orange background that I really enjoy.

These boots were made for walkin’

When I first painted in oils back in college there just was not enough paint in a tube for even a small painting as far as I was concerned. That is one reason I love working in my “digital darkroom” because I can really gook on the paint, no drying time, in any color combination imaginable. The background for this work is what pleases me the most on this one.

Who else needs foot candy?

Most anybody reading this blog is passionate about shoes. That is why I’m pleased to direct my readers to other web sites that share the passion. No question FootCandy.com is run by shoe aficionados and they deliver the goods.

Several of the styles displayed on their site would make great art as far as I’m concerned. The trick for me is to find those styles in the stores so I can photograph them. Just to be clear: I use only my own original photos. There are many reasons for this including copyright permissions but more importantly I started all this because I like to take pictures. Finding these shoes in the stores is part of the fun and this is a peak to the direction of some future work.

Red Rose Shoes – Most Popular

No question, this image was by far the most popular at the art fair last Sunday. It was a complete sell out. Soon I will have a new edition of this available for sale at American Frame. Red shoes in general were a hit at the fair, but this one was by far the favorite.

Four Handbags

This is a detail, for the full image please see my webpage. Somehow I was not quite happy with only one and I experimented with several methods to combine two or more handbags. This reminds me a little too much of the famous Andy Warhol portraits but this is what I wanted to do. I still like the one in the upper left corner best. I took these pictures during a recent trip to San Francisco in the fancy department stores. These were expensive and their dispays had a nice lighting system making the setup for the picture eaiser for me. The sales help for these purses was not much bothered by me taking the pictures but I have been kicked out of some high fashion stores in the past. Apparently those shop owners were afraid I was a spy taking pictures so I could steal their designs. Despite my assurances I was just an artist not interested in the subtle details, I was asked to leave.