USA Projects

In 1984 my son captured my imagination by introducing me to his favorite boy toys: Transformers.    So a few years later, when he gave me his personal life collection of his very own old sneakers, which consisted of about 10 pairs, I was already fairly adept at transforming everyday objects into extraordinary works of art.  The only problem though was that by then I was also exploring “exponentialism” or “oneness,” which I define as the multiplication of a single object against itself to create a new object.  The basic tenet of this theory for me at that time was that the more of a single object one has, the easier it becomes to induce or engineer visual transformation.   To put it simply: “the more the merrier.”

After banging these ten pairs of sneakers around in my studio for several days I got a craving for more and headed to my local thrift store.  Once there, to my surprise, it was the high heel shoes, not sneakers that caught my eye.  Not only were there more of them, but they also offered more variety in color, style, texture, and ultimately more possibilities than sneakers.  In addition they spoke volumes about our cultural history: high and low, architectural and sculptural, modern and ancient, sexual and spiritual.  High heels, I thought to myself, are indeed a real “anxious object.”

By 2005, when I was a fellow at the University of Georgia, I struck a deal with a local thrift store to acquired several thousand pairs of high heel shoes at once.  At that moment making art from high heel shoes officially became my obsession.  To date I’ve made furniture, flowers, landscape like relief’s, bust, masks, and both tribal, and sexually inspired figurative sculptures, all solely from high heel shoes.  Now I want to turn bring one of the sculptures, if not the world, of this obsessive vision to life through film.

Earlier this year I had a Pygmalion moment when I made a high heel shoe sculpture so life like that I wished it were alive.  It wasn't a beautiful woman like In the classic tale though.  In fact it wasn't even human.  On second thought it was a woman, but only in spirit, because it was made from 6 pairs of women's high heel shoes.  I guess you could say it had the sole of a woman.  But it really came to life when I added wings.   Somewhere between a Harpy and an Archimboldian housefly, it really looked like it wanted to fly.  Unable to resist the urge, I hired an animator to create a 15 second loop and SHOOFLY was born.

Hungry for more I now seek to make an original short film staring Shoofly as the little bug that buzzes in a woman's ear and convinces her to buy (more) shoes.  Image “Toy Story meets “Transformers” but in a women’s shoe store.  SHOOFLY: THE MOVIE will entertain its viewers while shining a subtle light on consumerism, and sexism.

Using Maya and other state of the art animation software SHOOFLY: THE MOVIE will look like a PIXAR short and appeal to core movie going audiences and demographic.  My goal is to travel this short through the festival circuit and eventual turn it into a feature film.

Your donations will finance the production of a short  film (3-5 minutes) version of SHOOFLY which will be shown at festivals across the country and serve as a trailer or teaser to attract larger interest and investments towards the production of a feature length project.