I went to this Adidas exhibit, which was to give me the "ultimate" experience of making me feel like I'm one with the "in" crowd. When I first arrived to the address 267 Canal Street, I walked into 2 stores, and asked about the Adidas exhibit. This Chinese man, who couldn't speak English told me to follow him, so I did. He walked through the store to the back, and crossed the street and into another entrance to a basement. I started to feel that this wasn't legit, and was wondering if this was a place where they sold fake Adidas. But then, at the end of the hallway, I saw this colorful videotracking projection and a ultra-contemporary sculpture that had Adidas stamped all over it. The experience was pretty effective in making me feel pretty "cool" that I knew about this event, and "special" that I was part of this covert operation. The tennis shoe line emulate printmaking business model, where some shoes are limited edition, and the same went for the athletic jackets. There were some commercial to underground grafitti artists tagging shoes, and popular artists like "Fafi, a French grafitti lady artist. "Fever 1," a dancer, hired for this 2-week event, pitched a great story/sale.

Adicolor Exhibit, 2006

Subversive Fashion

Anyway, they want to propagate the "Sneaker" game by making limited editions of these shoes. Adidas gave away these canvas bags. I decided to take photos of graffiti (public art), and etch them on the bag, to create a one-of-a-kind wearable art piece. For bold expression, wear the graffiti side up.

I'm thinking of taking this project further to trace street and graffiti culture, graffiti controversy, and investigate who are collecting this art. Are they other street artists? Also, I think this project reflects another layer of complexity, and begs the question: Who is the artist? Would this be considered a "Found Object?" Does context change the medium? Would it promote vandalism?

Found Graffiti , 2006

This graffiti piece is drawn on newspaper, and taped to the door. I'm etching this image to one of Adicolor bags. I plan to track it's popularity online.