Public Art Details
Shoe of Shoes
Artist: Victoria Fuller
Region: Clayton
Location: In front of the Brown Shoe Company offices
Address: Maryland Av at Topton Way, Clayton, MO 63105
Dimensions: 8' H, 12' W, 5' D
Year completed: 1999
Material: Cast aluminum
Owner: Leased from the artist by the Brown Shoe Company
Description:
Not just a giant shoe but a shoe of shoes. Hundreds upon hundreds of silvery high-heeled shoes placed every which way finally become the sides, sole and heel of agigantic shoe. At a distance it is large, imposing, dramatic and seemingly solid, but close up, it’s more a piece of three-dimensional pop-art lace. Light and air filter through and around the 2,000 shoesthat make up Victoria Fuller’s Shoe of Shoes.The artist says, "Shoes are the building blocks of this largeshoe sculpture, and metaphorically speaking, are like individual cells which make up the body of the shoe, seemingly containing the DNA of thelarger shoe. Each small shoe is like a miniature replica of the larger one." Fuller comments that the subject of shoes as well as scale and size are a part of story and myth—from Jack in the Beanstalk to The Old Lady Who Lived in a Shoe to Gulliver’s Travels. This piece was part of the 1999 Pier Walk exhibition in Chicago and it is fitting that it has found a home in front of the Brown Shoe office building in a city that once was home to 150 shoe companies
Everyday, common objects are used extensively in Fuller’s work. Sometimes the objects are cast in aluminum and become a construction unit as in Shoe of Shoes.However, Fuller frequently creates assemblages using the actual objects—softballs have become ripening fruit and cell phones symbols of “man’s desire.”
A 1980 graduate of Lorretto Heights College in Denver, Fuller received the Creative Fellowship Award from the Colorado Council on the Arts and Humanities. Since moving to Chicago and completing her MFA at the Art Institute of Chicago, she has received several awards and created numerous outdoor public art pieces. The artist lives and works in Chicago and created works for Arts in Transit and The People Project in 2002.
