Matthew Walker Timmons

For the Olio Festival, grace-gallery’s Rachel Zottenberg snagged local artists to transform plain shoes into wild creations.

With Winos footwear as canvas, knitters, designers, and painters put on a Shoe Show.

When art consultant and curator Sherri Kajiwara describes the shoes she just finished creating, one name keeps coming up: Dr. Seuss. And there is something whimsical and fantastical—something of the multicoloured dreamscapes and wild-woolly costumes of Whoville—about her vision: a haphazard hand-knit patchwork that stretches, leg warmer–like, right up to the knees.

“I’m what you call a nutty knitter,” Kajiwara confesses to the Straight in a phone conversation, adding that she’s recently begun studying the craft with an 82-year-old grandmother. “I just had this concept that sweaters for shoes would be a really fun thing to do. They just spoke to my wacky sense of colour and texture.”

Kajiwara’s funky footwear will join around 20 other pairs in the Shoe Show, on display Friday evening (August 14) at grace-gallery (1898 Main Street) as part of this weekend’s new interdisciplinary Olio Festival. They’re being designed, reworked, and reconstructed by everyone from fashion designers and weavers to graphic artists and painters. And shoe junkies can rest assured that no two pairs will look anything alike.

The exhibit and sale is the brainchild of Rachel Zottenberg, director of the year-and-a-half-old Main Street gallery and Olio visual-arts curator. It first came to her when her friend started distributing Winos, canvas lace-ups with rubber soles so-nicknamed for being the cheap dress shoes of choice for the down and out, now reclaimed by the antifashion hipsters of Brooklyn and beyond. He was selling them into Vancouver stores like Eugene Choo, Two of a Few, El Kartel, and the Block.

“I started to wear them myself, and it just clicked: these are canvas shoes, and artists paint on canvas,” Zottenberg explains by phone between errands before the festival.

Zottenberg had the artists come and pick from an array of Winos—in colours from black and blue through to plain white—and then sent them out to be transformed. Her only stipulation? They had to be wearable.

The response has been enthusiastic. Participating artists include Project Runway Canada competitor and Kdon designer Kim Cathers; painters Andy Dixon, Sarah Lopuch, Indigo, and Johnny Taylor; illustrator and graphic designer Dani Vachon; knitting designer Terri Potratz of Larry; stylist Victoria Potter; chef Todd Baiden; and cobbler Satyan Gohil. (“One of the other artists brought in her shoes [the Winos] to get cobbled by him, and he phoned and asked if he could take part,” Zottenberg explains.) “At grace, I’m always trying to show people that artist is a really general term—I’m trying to open that up,” Zottenberg says.

Zottenberg expects each pair to sell for around $175 the night of the exhibit. The event takes place on the evening when Olio’s concerts and comedy acts are concentrated in venues around Main Street, so she’s hoping to draw a new crowd into the gallery before the shows start.

As for the shoes, artists being artists, a few are bending Zottenberg’s only rule. Kajiwara, whose knitted footwear combines organic wool, cotton, silk, and cashmere blends, admits that if you really tried, “You could get your foot into them.”

Says Zottenberg diplomatically: “I think people will buy them to wear. There will be a few that will be bought to show and enjoy.”