We are continually inspired by Creative Growth, the Oakland nonprofit arts center for adults with disabilities, and have built a relationship with the organization going back to our 2014 Tomorrow Together shop.
Last April, Olivia was back at C. She saw artists prepping apparel for the annual CG fashion show fundraiser. Some artists were decorating shoes. That was an a-ha moment for Olivia, who was planning our Pop-In@Nordstrom x Vans shop at the time.
Now lo and behold we have an exclusive collection of custom Vans designed by CG artists, each pair a one-of-one, available online and in limited quantities in-store at our San Francisco, Seattle and Bellevue locations.
See a selection of our styles below and read stories from Jennifer Strate O’Neal, CG’s partnerships and communications manager, about four specific pairs of Creative Growth-designed Vans.
–Andrew Matson
SHOP: Pop-In@Nordstrom x Vans
Sher-Ron Freeman was not familiar with Vans before this project. She works almost entirely in textiles. For that runway show I was telling you about, someone had donated a falling-apart Louis Vuitton handbag to us. Sher-Ron took it and she put these embellishments on it, buttons, plastic beads, dangling ornaments. I love that when she got the Vans she did the same thing. The drawing on the shoe is very much how she works on paper. But she did her handbag treatment to the shoes as well. Fun fact: she did that bag for our runway show, and someone saw that bag and actually mailed us another Louis bag with a check in it, for Sher-Ron to customize it the same way. These might be my favorite pair. I would put them on the shelf as artwork. She’s not commenting on another thing she’s seen elsewhere. It’s completely unique.
–Jennifer Strate O’Neal
Sasha Banks, whose name you see on the side of the shoe here, is a professional WWE wrestler. So this is a shout-out. Sherrie works in wood a lot, and does drawings, and uses a lot of pop culture figures. Sherrie definitely understood Vans and was excited to work on this. This is her favorite wrestler. That’s Sasha on the toe. She has hot pink hair in real life, too.
–Jennifer Strate O’Neal
What’s interesting about Dan Miller is that he typically does not work in textiles, but he responded to this project. And he also works in black & white pretty much, so these colors are rare. Just about every piece of work that Dan completes is exhibition quality. He works mainly on paper and on wood. He writes words that he repeats over and over. Can you make out the word? He often repeats a story about lightbulbs. This looks like it says “light.” Dan has work at the MoMA in New York City and major museums and private art collections all over the world. He usually starts with a written word and then he’ll do layers and layers of more hash lines, and it becomes more abstract. Right now he’s working in large format pieces, three feet by five feet. They end up looking like these amazing clouds.
–Jennifer Strate O’Neal
Nick Pagan loves Vans and wears them all the time. He’s also a huge pop culture fan; it comes through in his work. He’s one of the younger artists here at Creative Growth. In this one he’s chosen a Snapchat filter which he’s taken to the next level, which is a genius thing to put on a pair of Vans. A Vans customer is going to know what this is, and Nick knows that. He was so excited to get his artwork “framed” on a pair of Vans, so to speak.
–Jennifer Strate O’Neal
via Nordstrom Fashion Blog http://ift.tt/2bo9ELt
Posts
0 comments:
Post a Comment