Thursday, February 10, 2011

Works of Art

“You know, local artists are downstairs in Nordy’s painting TOMS again today…” my Mom says with a slight grin of anticipation, knowing my reaction would look similar to that of a gal who heard a knock on her door from Ed McMahon.

“WHAT?! YES!” I say, grabbing her hand on this rare shopping trip and steering her to the south side of the congested mall, practically mowing over a crowd of people that were doing what there, I don’t know. Milling about? Being teens? Fighting cabin fever? Regardless, they were slowing my intense shopping pace…

“Don’t you already have a circus of those?” my Mom half-laughs, half-asks, as I stare intently at the color selection as if it were the hardest decision I’ve made in my life (by the way, don’t tell my work this – I mean, we’re supposed to be helping save children’s lives for goodness’ sake). Finally, a charcoal color is selected (because hello I of course have all the sparkly ones and I’m saving some dough for all the springy ones for when it finally arrives) and I trot up to the counter to pay, catching the eye of the young dude who always seems a bit torn up that he works in the BP section at the large department store. I hand over the debit card and as he asks me to describe what I’d like painted on them, I can feel him his eyes internally rolling as I go into detail, which leads him to decidedly just walk me over there to chat with the artist herself. Even better! I think to myself…

A young, hip gal greets me at the table, her speech slow, steady and super chill as any good artist would be. Her hair is tied loosely in dreads, her tee simple and un-tucked and her jewelry one-of-a-kind, most likely created with her own two hands. I glance at the lines of shoes on her table and suddenly feel the immense pressure to come up with something uber fabu to don on these shoes. My dream was to have Lawson’s handprints line the canvas in amazing colors that would take me into spring, but the factors of a) he wasn’t there b) we all know how the Valentine thumbprints went c) I wasn’t sure how toxic the paint was all led me to go with the standard pompei flowers that it seemed other girls that had gone before me had chosen. Not wanting to completely follow the herd, I requested an olive branch running throughout, which symbolizes peace and a tattoo I had always desired, with hidden initials of M,L and C within it. Which I decided was pretty rockin’, given that’s a) my monogram b) represents Mike, Lawson and our last name. Score!

An hour passes, and we pick up the final product:

And I’m over the moon. So much so I even wore them barefoot in the two fresh inches of snow the other day because well, I can. I recall also eating Fritos for breakfast that morning, so I’m not sure what was going on…

So thank you, dear local artist and the world for this trend of TOMS, that are not only like walking barefoot with a slight slipper feel, but also result in a pair of shoes given to a child in need with every purchase. Truly – a work of art.

And speaking of works of art, check out this other snazzy pair I invested in this week.

Yet another Sperry original.

So though this attachment to buying bizarre shoes that so rightly matches my quirky personality…hey, it’s cheaper than buying ACTUAL art, right?!

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