ONE BIG STEP FOR ART (AND SMOLUK’S FEET)

Smoluk, a hugely talented artist, knows a thing or two about that.

Finding the right shoe isn’t always an easy job, especially if you don’t quite fit the standards.

Faced with the personal challenge of finding small size shoes (2.5 to be exact), she dedicated her art to creating footwear out of cardboard! That’s right! She designs replicas of the most popular sneakers with cardboard to increase awareness about recycling, while letting her creativity flow! We asked her to tell us more about her art and the world surrounding it.

How would you describe your art?

I have been working with cardboard for a long time as well as using it for my art, which consists in creating objects with this material. Always searching for cheap shoes at my size and, often doomed to finish in the children’s section, this quest for a solution to my problem has become an obsession. That is why I decided to combine this practice with my shoe problem. So I started sneaker-art by creating cardboard shoes. Later on I experienced the art of shoe throwing or “shoefiti”. This way of combining the artistic experience with the ephemeral side of street culture aligns with my ecological concerns. The sky then transforms into a huge canvas that serves me both as a gallery, a business card and also a way to educate walkers about recycling, reuse and re-appropriate cardboard day-to-day.

How does your art allow you to express yourself?

Accessible to all, cardboard is everywhere in the world. I fundamentally believe in the ecological potential of this unloved, poorly known and yet so present material everywhere around us. By creating these cardboard shoes, I try to send a vision of the future where recycling is systematic. The uses of our resources to create a new fashion “fast-fashion”, that emerges and relives with recycled materials worn by all. Today I expose my cardboard on the wall like a collector would, who doesn’t wear their wonderful shoes and look at them proudly at home. I work actively to be able to wear them soon.

Where do you find inspiration?

The bins of my neighbors! I always find beautiful colored cardboard while recycling. During my travels I love to find unprecedented prints!

What is your go-to shoe?

Air Force One high top, definitely! It’s the first one i created and the most realized.

Instagram: Smoluk