A new exhibition at the Heard Museum of Native American art combines fine art and —footwear.
Full conversation
SAM DINGMAN: About 20 years ago, on a dare, Charles King hot-glued some coins to a pair of sneakers.
King runs a pair of galleries — one in Santa Fe, and another in Scottsdale. He specializes in Pueblo pottery. One day, one of the artists whose work he shows, Susan Folwell, got this idea. Instead of painting a pot, she wanted to decorate — shoes. Folwell told King she’d do a pair if he did. She painted a winged turquoise lizard with futuristic goggles on the heel of a pair of Chuck Taylor All-Stars — and King got out his hot glue gun. When they finished, King realized he might be on to something. He started reaching out to other potters he knew, and before long, he found himself with a unique collection: dozens of Chucks, size 10 and a half, decorated with original designs by some of the most famous ceramic artists in the country.
When Olivia Barney heard about this, she realized that many of those artists also had work in the collection of the Heard Museum. Barney is the Collections Coordinator at the Heard, and she reached out to Charles King to see if he’d be willing to donate some of his collection. The result is an exhibit Barney calls “Art & Sole.” Decorated shoes alongside ceramic pots, paintings, sculptures, and photography — all by Native artists.
OLIVIA BARNEY: I wanted to show their visual language, and like how you could see their styles go from the shoes, also to the artwork. So even though they’re different mediums, you can still see that they’re very similar in how they look. You can see certain designs that are repeated, or maybe the way they move their brushstroke is the same. So you can still tell that it’s the same artist.
DINGMAN: When I visited the Heard a few weeks ago, Barney’s walked me through the show. One of the first installations shows a pair of Chucks featuring a painting of a tiger by Tammy Garcia. They’re displayed next to a ceramic pot, which Garcia also made. The pot is about a foot and a half tall, with a series of deep cuts and grooves in its body.
BARNEY: I just felt like the movement visually that was going on in the pot with her designs, went very well with, like, the thick, black, bold lines of the tiger, and how they varied in size. So it was very much just, like, how the deep carvings kind of match the brush strokes in the shoes.
DINGMAN: Elsewhere in the exhibition, an oil painting by Phillip L.P. Vigil from 2016 rhymes perfectly with the shoes he painted several years later: both works are densely packed with vibrant bursts of yellow, pink, and red.
BARNEY: I think it really showed the brush strokes, and like the painting aspect of how he creates his work. Because while it’s very detailed, and it has very great shading, it’s also showing the splatters of paint, it’s not hiding the fact that it’s a painting. So I really like that it was like, bold and out there. So I felt like it really showed his skill with showing minimal hues and colors.
DINGMAN: On another wall, a portrait by Marla Allison shows a woman in profile. Her hair is decorated with a series of dark black triangles that gradually increase in size. Next to the portrait, a similar set of triangles run along the sides of the shoes she painted. Barney says both works make her think of mesas.
As I looked at the various pairings, I was struck by the subtle but clear connections between these works. There were obvious echoes of shape and color and style, which, Barney told me, is exactly what she was hoping the show would make me think about. “Art & Sole” is a show about the choices artists make, whether it’s on a canvas or a sneaker. But it occurred to me that I might not have noticed those choices if I wasn’t seeing them in an unfamiliar place — like the heel of a pair of Chucks. That, Barney told me, is also intentional. The shoes are an invitation to viewers who might not think of themselves as connoisseurs of fine art.
BARNEY: To show kind of something they could connect to, which is the sneakers, but, and that makes all the other creations much more approachable.
DINGMAN: But there was also something bigger going on.
BARNEY: It’s showing them something they see in their everyday lives, but then connecting them to Native cultures, these people who are artists but happen to be Native, too. So it’s also just a way to make the institution more approachable, too.
DINGMAN: Barney says there’s this conversation they have at the Heard sometimes, about what audiences expect when they come to the museum. There can be this expectation that Native artwork is “traditional.” That it’s somehow anachronistic — a vestige of a culture that doesn’t exist anymore. Barney says part of her goal is to reject that idea. The work on display at the Heard emanates from Native cultures and traditions - but that doesn’t mean it’s not contemporary art.
BARNEY: When traditional art was created, it was contemporary. And I think we try to take that forward in a lot of our exhibits. There’s not a delineation between the two, they both feed each other, it’s always back and forth. And we’re always creating something new — and I think it’s good to show that, and not pigeonhole artists into one specific style, or one specific thing. Which is why we wanted to show these shoes with the artwork — so it’s showing the expansiveness and the innovation of artists.
DINGMAN: On the rear wall of the exhibition, Barney showed me a set of works by Jason Garcia. Garcia likes drawing in a style inspired by comic books — on his Chucks, he created a superhero version of a member of his tribe. In the accompanying piece, a clay tile with an illustration, he drew a pair of corn maidens in tribal regalia. They’re holding smartphones and cameras, and there’s a TV satellite in the background.
BARNEY: What I like about Jason Garcia’s tiles, it’s showing Native people just how we are today. It’s showing we do have traditional aspects in our culture. But we also, you know, use technology, we’re also tied into the current day. Like whatever everybody else does as people — we do, too.
