Following on from another recent sneaker-related lighting project, we thought we'd share this sculptural lamp created as a collaboration between New York-based artist Grotesk (aka Kimou Meyer) and Belgian-based art producer Case Studyo...

Entitled 6ft 6in, the lamp sports 'string bean' legs and blocky (Air Jordan 1) sneaker feet. The piece is 
made from hand-painted wood
 and was produced in an edition of just 23 (all of which have now been sold). The lamp also comes with a wooden shoebox-style box
 and a certificate of authenticity signed and numbered by Meyer.

Meyer is a Swiss-born, Belgian-trained graphic designer who arrived in New York at precisely the moment when the downtown art scene spilled over into stores, products and brands. In the decade that followed, Kimou worked with almost all the key players in New York’s 'brand underground', drawing on his classical training and outsider perspective to develop an iconic graphic style. Living and working Brooklyn, Kimou now divides his time between running his co-owned creative agency, Doubleday & Cartwright, and making art under the name Grotesk.

Case Studyo is a publisher and producer of artworks by contemporary artists, including the likes of Parra, Kevin Lyons and Craig Redman.

To see more work by Grotesk (including a Jordan 1 screenprint), click here. 
To see more of the art produced by Case Studyo, click here

In collaboration with Asics, German sneaker boutique Afew recently commissioned Dutch artist Kwills to create a collection of 12 sneaker-inspired artworks - a project which was part of a special event organised in celebration of this year's Japan Day in Düsseldorf...

Japan Day (or Japan-Tag in German) is a German-Japanese festival which is celebrated each year in May/June. The festival celebrates the rich Japanese cultural presence in Düsseldorf, which hosts the largest Japanese community in Europe. Afew decided to host an event to commemorate the 2013 celebrations and, as part of the project, asked sneaker artist Kwills (aka Quincy Renon) to depict 12 of their favourite Asics releases on canvas.

The final paintings contained some of the most recognisable shoes from the past few years (including the Ronnie Fieg Salmon Toe plus store collaborations with the likes of Hanon, Patta and Slam Jam) and were displayed at the event alongside a showcase of Afew's top 50 Asics releases and various vintage Asics footwear. 

As shown below, a limited edition Best of Gel Lyte III print and T-shirt were also created exclusively for the event, both featuring all 12 Asics-inspired sneaker artworks.

For more examples of Kwill's work, check out his website here. 
Photography by Afew and SneakerZimmer

To help promote their eco-friendly Reuse-a-Shoe initiative, Nike enlisted the help of London-based design and motion studio ManvsMachine to create this charming motion piece...

Over the past few years, Nike have been at the forefront of developing new eco-friendly technologies - from the international football shirts they produced in 2010 (made from plastic bottles), to the entire Considered product range (specifically designed to lessen the carbon impact on the planet). Under the Nike Better World banner, the animated film shown here highlights another of their major breakthroughs; a process of recycling old used shoes to create a substance dubbed Nike Grind. Once processed, this material can then be used to create high quality sports surfaces including tennis courts, turf fields, athletics tracks and more.

Amazingly, since 1990, Nike have transformed 28 million pairs of shoes and 36,000 tons of scrap material into Nike Grind for use in more than 450,000 locations around the world. Nike Grind end-products cover approximately 632,000,000 square feet - nearly enough to cover the entire island of Manhattan (23 square miles). We've also included some images of the grinding process and its various outcomes below.

The ManvsMachine animation presents a very simplified but informative look into the process of Reuse-a-Shoe. Using a Free Run 2 as the subject matter, the film playfully guides the viewer through the journey of a shoe's lifespan, questioning what happens when the shoe is eventually at the end of it's time. The animation contains some great little details, including the use of basketballs and tennis rackets as grinding tools. 

In addition to the Reuse-a-Shoe project, ManvsMachine were also responsible for Nike's animated campaign for Kobe Bryant's signature shoe, the Zoom Kobe 8. As shown below, the short film focuses on Bryant's Black Mamba persona, giving the shoe the agility and personality of a snake, while transforming the court into a scaled surface.

Online sneaker archive Sneakerpedia have recently been in touch to let us know that they celebrated their two-year anniversary earlier in May. Apart from being amazed that it was (already) two years since SP launched, we were also pleased to see that the most ‘loved’ sneaker on the website was actually an artist collaboration…

Since Sneakerpedia’s global launch in 2010, SP’s members have uploaded an impressive 20,524 different sneakers to the site, with contributions from over 146 nationalities and featuring 72 different sneaker designers and brands. The site features everything from staple general releases and vintage classics, to rare one-off artist designer collaborations such as the New Balance & House33 shoe - and even our very own Art & Sole Cortez iD project.

Over the past two years, SP has also identified the most owned and loved sneakers on the website - the most owned being the Nike Air Max 90 Infrared with more than twice the amount of ‘owns’ than the next sneaker in line, the Air Jordan III True Blue. Interestingly for us, the most loved sneaker is a 2010 release by Nike, who teamed up with Amsterdam-based store Patta and Dutch artist Parra to design the much coveted Nike Air Max 1 ‘Cherrywood’ (shown above).

As part of the 2nd year anniversary celebrations, Sneakerpedia is also launching a Crate of the Year competition, with the winner receiving a weekend in New York (with sneaker spending money) and a guided tour of the city by sneaker renowned afficionado Bobbito Garcia.

To take part in the competition, or to view some of the 20,524 sneakers uploaded to the Sneakerpedia website so far, visit www.sneakerpedia.com

In much in the same vain as our own AFOMFS project, Romanian artist Ghica Popa decided to illustrate his favourite (Nike) sneakers using his very personal style; a surrealist mix of science fiction, comic book art, cubism and pop art...

In adidtion to working as an advertising agency creative director, Popa is an illustration artist based in Bucharest, Romania, with clients including the likes of Boxfresh, Orange, Ikea and Samsung. The Space Sneakers project shown here has actually received a fair amount of press over recent months, but we thought it was about time we showed them here on Art & Sole.

Popa has also just completed a follow up to the initial Space Sneakers project, by illustrating a variety of sneaker silhouettes for issue 27 of Sneaker Freaker magazine - a selection of which (including the SF cover) can also be seen below

To see more work from Ghica Popa (including this custom sneaker exhibition), click here

As well as liking sneakers here at Art & Sole, we also like bikes. Of course, we especially like sneakers combined with bikes (to make art)...

Originally commissioned back in 2008 by Yorgo Tloupas of Intersection magazine, this bike was created by London-based designer Max Knight. As you can see, eight pairs of sneakers (from various manufacturers) were mounted on thick spokes and substituted for the bike's wheels. The idea was for the bike to 'walk' rather than roll, and to prove it worked Knight also made a (very) short video of the bike in action. Although possibly not the smoothest ride, the great thing is you could change the sneakers whenever you like (depending on weather conditions maybe) and, of course, you could say goodbye to the age-old problem of getting a puncture...

Photography by Thomas Brown

Art & Sole have teamed up with our good friends at the excellent Stereohype graphic art and fashion boutique to bring you this amazing set of 48 sneaker badges - the artwork for which was taken from our very own ‘A Few of My Favourite Sneakers’ project…

Incase you’re not familiar with the project, ‘A Few of My Favourite Sneakers’ is an ongoing series which sees Art & Sole commission select artists and illustrators to draw their favourite sneakers (to see more click here). For this collaboration with Stereohype, we’ve drawn on the archive of work done so far to create series one in what we hope is an ongoing collection of AFOMFS badges. Released today, the series includes artwork by Andrew Joyce, Becca Thorne, David Sparshott, Emma Kelly, Jason Munro, Jean Jullien, Jeffrey Bowman, Matt Sewell, Owen Phillips, Rich Fairhead, Rob Flowers, Rude, Scott Balmer, Simon Peplow, Stephen Cheetham, Tim McDonagh, Toby Neilan and Tony Easley.

Helping to celebrate the recent Free and Flyknit footwear innovations, Nike has teamed up with digital artists Universal Everything, Daniel Widrig and Quayola+Sinigaglia to create The Art + Science of Natural Motion, an exhibition based around the principles of ‘fit’ and ‘flex’…

Originally hosted during Milan Design Week by Nike Stadium Milano, the exhibition sees the three artists interpret themes including the body in motion, technology, design, art and sport. Universal Everything’s The Art and Science of Fit explores movement with a 3D interactive experience that allows the viewer to manipulate strands of colour with the sweep of an arm. Flowing multicoloured woven patterns move freely on the large screens of a digitized cube structure, intelligently fitting to the silhouette of the visitor (as shown in the video below).

In his first collaborative project with the brand, Jeff Staple and the Staple Design team join forces with Puma to create the Pigeon Suede...

We last featured Jeff Staple on the blog back in November, after he worked with New Balance and UK sneaker store size? to create the third installment in the New Balance Pigeon series. We should probably mention that this ongoing series of pigeon-themed shoes originally stems from Staple's work on the Nike SB Pigeon Dunk from back in 2005.

The colour palette used on this (handmade in Japan) Puma Suede is almost identical to that of the original Nike shoe, with tonal grey uppers and deep orange on the outsole. A lighter pink has been used in place of an orange for the sock-liner, but in typical Staple style (aside from the New Balance Black Pigeon release which didn't feature this detail) an embroidered pigeon icon is placed on the rear of the upper. As a final touch, the tongue tab displays a pink silhouette of a pigeon instead of Puma's standard leaping cat insignia.

As you can see from the imagery below, the visuals created by Staple pay homage to the Suede's roots in hip hop culture, and inparticular that of the breakdancing scene in New York. The images also feature the added detail of a make-shift cardboard dancemat (made out of boxes from Staple's Reed Space store) a ghetto blaster and, of course, pigeons.

Available in limited numbers (approximately 500 worldwide), the Puma Pigeon Suede by Staple was released instore exclusively at Reed Space, New York on 17 April and a worldwide release at selected accounts is scheduled for 3 May

Following on from his MAX100 project, illustrator Matt Stevens was recently commissioned by Nike to expand upon his tribute to the Air Max 1, in a project aptly titled #AIRMAX...

In his original MAX100 project (which eventually evolved into a book via the Kickstarter website) Stevens challenged himself to create as many visual interpretations of the Air Max 1 as he could imagine. This led him to utilise an enormous range of visual concepts and mixed media, ranging from shoe-shaped pancakes to a car air freshener. To coincide with the recent release of the Air Max Enginered Mesh series, Nike asked Stevens to expand upon his original subject matter and apply his experimental approach to the four most classic Air Max slhouettes; the Air Max 1, Air Max 90, Air Max 95 and the Air Max 97.

Alongside Steven's personal interpretations, the underlying themes for many of the illustrations are design inspiration, colour, cultural significance and reinvention. The more obvious references to these themes include the Air Max 1's visible air unit which was inspired by The Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Air Max 90's infrared (originally labelled radiant red) colour, the Air Max 95's anatomical references and the Air Max 97's resemblence to the Japanese 'bullet' train.

To view the entire #AIRMAX project, visit the Nike's Facebook page here