Supertramp Musings

Greatest Strength/Unrealized Potential Critique: Wire Shoe Project

Working with wire was an entirely new experience for me. I have learned many new and important techniques when working with wire and hopefully I’ll be able to utilize them on other projects in the future. As for the critique on my shoe:

Strengths:

• I chose a shoe that was old because I knew that the wire shoe wouldn’t turn out to be exactly like the real thing, but it gave it enough of a believable shape and the contours turned out nicely, as well

• Utilizing large pieces of wire throughout many different areas in the shoe, such as the one that created the sole and the toe of the shoe, helped pull the subject together, creating more unity

•  I was originally going to go back and crimp all of my cold connections, but I decided because my shoe looked so ratty and was very malleable, I only crimped ones that were solid in the shoe’s structure and other connections are somewhat loose

• I started my shoe several different ways: starting from the sole, the tongue, and (three time’s the charm) with the opening of the shoe. Being able to try and determine where I should start and what worked and didn’t was very beneficial to the final structure of the shoe. It is always important for an artist to come at a situation from many different angles so that they will have a better understanding of their problem, goal, and solution

Weaknesses:

• It was a bit of a  handicap to have never worked with wire as a material previously because you are not always certain how your new material (in this case wire) will react. In the end, I learned a lot, but there is always room for improvement

• The front left side of the shoe became really “busy” looking with all of those connections in one area and it tneds to draw your eye away from the shoe as a whole

• Some areas of my shoe look flatter than others (The left side of the shoe, the bow of the shoelaces) If I had more wire I could probably make them pop out a bit more, but unfortunately I ran out

• Again, to have never worked with the material before, I didn’t realize how time consuming it could be to just bend the wire into a comprehensive shape. Next time, I’ll be sure to plan my time management with new materials more carefully