It all started when…

As we attempt to build a better future, how can we connect each other through slowness and beauty and stitch together our future visions for progress? 

Shoes for the Landlocked works to engage participants by offering a tangible good, custom shoes and leatherwork classes, while encouraging them to envision a better future through meditation and writing, for themselves and for each other. The workshop space where these programs take place mimics a hull of a ship, transporting participants from a disinvested urban manufacturing landscape into a surreal leather-filled boat belly in which to conduct their self-transformation while I work to cover their feet for their journey. The ship installation consists of curved vertical wooden columns to make the transverse frame of the ship, and horizontal wooden plates to fill out the form. The interior is a traditional cobblers studio, equipped with anvils, hammers, leather, lasts, and the stitching machines and saws needed for shoemaking.

I have been making traditional bespoke Italian shoes in the tradition of my family roots in Campagna (see Scarpe here). As an artist deeply entrenched with community building, I have been attempting to reconnect with inherent ancestral knowledge by working with my hands. Coming from a long line of shoemakers, I felt the calling to examine this craft. This storefront installation project expands this research and brings traditional, hand-made shoemaking to the forefront as a mode for exploration of history and place while creating pathways for community building, collective healing and navigating a precarious future.

Just as a boat displaces water while staying afloat to carve out space for others, so do we. It is the nature of being. This boat is a space that centers care. This boat holds space for it all. We are both the displaced and the displacers.

My work is rooted in my persistent optimism that in bringing people together, we can bridge the deep divides in our society. 

This installation was created with the fabrication assistance of Scottie Bellissemo, Reggie Woolridge and Dan Hibbard. Funding was provided by the City of Cincinnati and the UNIDEE Illy Award.