SNKR WARS

For those of you that do not know that I am taking a sculpture class at UNLV, you do now. This particular sculpture was quite fun for me to make because I have a passion for Nike shoes!! The sculpture assignment was to take found objects and tear them apart and then put them back together in the form of a sculpture. Whatever kind of art I make, I need it to have meaning to me or my creative ability does not work. So, I went to Savers to look for objects and I saw this old toy with black tracks and yellow wheels and the ideas started to flow, so I bought it. I also went to the dollar store and was able to find a styrofoam plane that looked like a Bowing 747. At that point the images in my head were very clear but I needed shoes, so I called my man Zach Brandt (which is also a shoe freak) and he so graciously provided a pair. I also bought gladiator warriors that each had helmets and capes from the dollar store. With a lot of destruction/construction and a little bit of spray paint, “SNKR WARS” was born. What is SNKR WARS? Well obviously it is an abbreviation for “Sneaker Wars”. There have been sneaker wars since the late 80’s. When Michael Jordan entered the NBA, the Nike Air Jordan shoe instantly became something sought after. People would wait in lines for hours and hours to buy them. Some people would prepay months before and then wait in line for hours for them. I remember as a kid owning many of the Nike Air Jordan’s, I cannot explain what it is about them, but when you are wearing a pair of those shoes you feel like the coolest person in the world. I know this sounds dumb but those of you that have purchased a pair know what I am talking about. The other thing we need to consider is that the shoes back then and still today cost over 100.00. I can remember my mom painfully forking over the money for those shoes every year, and saying to me “You better not tell your father”, or as she was paying she would say, “You are going to do so many chores around the house”!
People were even held up by gun point and had their shoes stolen off their feet. Although I haven’t heard those kinds of incidents in a while, SNKR WARS still exist. Now, people are still waiting in the long lines to buy the shoes, the second the store opens, but instead of buying one pair they buy 10 pairs. They then proceed to sell them on EBay or on the streets for triple the price. Then all the people that couldn’t make it to the store on the opening release dates for particular shoes are forced to pay the high ridiculous prices. A little bit about the sculpture.....You can see that they are on the same team but they are fighting each other alot like us as shoe collectors fighting to get shoes. I painted the sculpture with army colors to get the feeling of war.