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Jan Sneesby Aaron
"Pair of Pears"
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| (Photos by Patrick Fraser) |
Yes, these are shoes, in fact, purple suede stilettos! No, you can't see them because I chose to transform them into a pair of pears or more specifically Blinged Boscs. From the beginning, I knew I needed to make soft sculpture shapes. The creation took its own direction as poly fill, cotton quilt batting and knee-highs formed the unadorned bosc. While the bosc pear shape was the beginning, much harder was adding all the little blemish-like elements that are inherent to the real thing. The bland soft sculpture forms covered with hand-dyed silk velvet and quilting cottons were embellished using Crayola color crayons, beads, raffia and ribbons to add some bling.
The real challenge surfaced: what to do with the stiletto heel? My original design was to incorporate the shoe heel as the pear stem but it wasn't working. This led to my ìAHA Moment: Why can't the shoes heel become a stand holding up the pear? I used fake leather and glass candleholders to make a bosc pear stand. The final touch adds more whimsy: I scanned a real grocery sticker, printed it on fabric and appliqued one onto each pear. Unfortunately, one challenge went unsolved: how to make my shoes tasty enough to eat!