About
Victoria Fuller’s sculpture is not just a giant shoe, but a shoe of shoes. Hundreds upon hundreds of silvery high-heels placed every which way become the sides, sole, and heel of a gigantic shoe. At a distance it is large, imposing, dramatic, and seemingly solid, but close up, it resembles more a piece of three-dimensional pop-art lace. Light and air filter through and around the 2,000 shoes that make up Fuller’s Shoe of Shoes. The artist says, “Shoes are the building blocks of this large shoe sculpture, and metaphorically speaking, are like individual cells which make up the body of the shoe, seemingly containing the DNA of the larger shoe. Each small shoe is like a miniature replica of the larger one.” Fuller comments that the subject of shoes as well as scale and size are a part of story and myth — from Jack in the Beanstalk to The Old Lady Who Lived in a Shoe to Gulliver’s Travels. This piece was part of the 1999 Pier Walk exhibition in Chicago; it is fitting that it has found a home in front of the Brown Shoe office building in a city that once was home to 150 shoe companies.
Dimensions: 8′ x 12′ x 5′
Year Completed: 1999
Material: Cast aluminum
Owner: Leased from the artist by the Brown Shoe Company
