Le Scarpe

Scarpe per ricordare

I have been making bespoke Italian shoes in the tradition of my family roots in Campagna. This project will expand this research and bring traditional, hand-made shoemaking to the forefront as a mode for exploration of history and place while creating pathways for navigating a precarious future.

As a social practice artist deeply entrenched with community building and collaborative arts organizing, I have been attempting to slow down and reconnect with inherent ancestral knowledge by working with my hands. My first name, Calcagno, translates to ‘heel’ in Italian, and is a family name. Coming from a long line of shoemakers, with the last remaining Calcagno shoe business in my family’s home town recently closed, I felt the calling to examine this craft on my own and what it means to be a shoemaker, and what this craft could mean for the future of our world.

Fast fashion has become the norm, and the ethics and modalities of quick and cheap clothing and shoes are not only bad for the humans that are laboring in intensive and inequitable ways to create these goods, but they are also tragic for our environment and the sustainability of life on our planet as a whole.

As we attempt to build a better future, how can lessons of past technologies and traditions inform the steps we take? How can we connect each other through slowness and beauty and stitch together our future visions for progress?

This project began as a remembering practice with my first few pairs called “Scarpe per Ricordare.” Shoemaking is now transitioning to a practice of generosity and recognition, as I create pairs for special people who contribute immensely to my life and the lives that surround them.