How one artist turned recycled materials into sneaker art
Recycling, but make it fashion.
Artist Andy Yoder created hundreds of sneaker art pieces from packaging, posters, shopping bags, and other materials to make a statement about consumer culture.
“I want to give people some food for thought on all this stuff, the effect this has on the planet,” Yoder told Yello in an interview.
Credit: Greg Staley
Yoder’s “Jordan 5’s” were inspired by Cultural DC’s shipping container art gallery. While researching shipping containers, Yoder came across the story of the “Great Shoe Spill of 1990,” when a cargo ship traveling from South Korea to the U.S. lost 21 containers in a storm, including five that contained Nike shoes. Tens of thousands of shoes spilled into the ocean, and many washed up along the coast of the Pacific Northwest. The spill later resulted in a study about ocean currents.
“I tripped over this idea,” Yoder said.
Credit: Greg Staley
Yoder’s work was scheduled to go on display at Cultural DC’s Mobile Art Gallery to coincide with Earth Day for an exhibition titled “Overboard” before the gallery temporarily closed in March because of the pandemic. The show is expected to open at a later date.
The Jordan 5 was introduced in 1990, the same year as the spill, and Yoder set out to create his own version of the shoes. He first tried to make them based on photos he took, but found “that was useless.” He then bought a used pair of Jordan 5s online and made a template from them. His original shoes were white, which he thought looked bland. Yoder’s “a-ha” moment came when he decided to try making them out of packaging.
Credit: Greg Staley
“It’s got the color built into it,” he said.
He wanted the look of the sneakers lined up on a wall to evoke the look of a supermarket cereal aisle, “coming at you with bold graphics.”
“It’s about how sneakers are collectible items and when we dress in clothes with logos, how we’re identifying ourselves and how we want to be perceived,” he said.
The shoes are made from 25 parts and so far he’s created about 230 of them.
Credit: Greg Staley
Over time, Yoder has gotten better at creating the shoes, which typically take from three to five hours to create.
“Even though I’m using the same templates for the same basic shapes, each one has variations,” he said. “If I’m just using the brands as a mini billboard, it becomes too predictable.”
Subscribe to Yello for the latest news on the culture, branding, and visual rhetoric of politics, delivered each week:
He began making shoes out of materials pulled from the recycling bin. One shoe was made from a poster of John Audubon’s flamingo he found outside someone’s home alongside items with a “free” sign.
Credit: Greg Staley
He’s made other shoes out of art too, including one made from an image of “The Great Wave Off Kanagawa,” a Japanese woodblock print from the 1800s.
Credit: Greg Staley
Designer shopping bags also make great shoes. It’s something Yoder found out after he made a sneaker from the packaging of a perfume from Tiffany’s that was given as an anniversary gift to a manager at Stable, a D.C. art studio.
Credit: Greg Staley
High-end fashion brand packaging is fun to work with, he said, because it often includes details like raised, embossed hand lettering, or draw strings, which Yoder has used for laces, like in this shoe made from a Tom Ford bag.
Credit: Greg Staley
Yoder’s made work before that can be read as having an environmental message. His “Early One Morning” sculpture used more than 300,000 wooden matches to create a 200-lb. globe. Hurricane Sandy struck the northeastern U.S. while Yoder was working on the piece, and he included an image of the storm off the coast.
“If I had one issue to vote on, I think it would be the environment because that affects everybody,” he said.
Credit: Greg Staley
He said he believes art can be a way to open people’s minds and cut across boundaries.
“I use the colors and forms and the eye candy aspect of the shoes to open people’s eyes and hopefully their minds,” he said. “Just telling people about that and ranting about it I don’t think does very much. You use the sneakers and the colorful display and sneakerhead culture that people can relate to immediately.”
Yoder’s shoes are on display online at Cultural DC’s website. In October, they’re scheduled to travel to the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center in Brattleboro, Vt.