While I see people around me like the shoe maker and designer Michelle Quick find ways to bring contrary elements together in symbiotic fashion, giving breath to seemingly opposing elements:  

Masculine/ Feminine.    

Internal/ External.  

Industrial/ Refined.

I wonder how these paradigms became so encoded. Not that I have a problem with Yin Yang’s or the boldness of things that are purely definable, but it gives me great joy and hope when I come across that which can slip in and out of the traditional and solidly definable.  Michelle’s work pushes the limits of the classic without being contrary for contraries sake. Expanding the boundaries in a sophisticated revolution without  the clamor and violence of an angsty rebellion.   For the last few years Michelle has been studying the art of bespoke and focusing on men’s footwear and traditional gender roles within craft practice.  Coming from a female-dominant crafts like fiber/textiles and now working in bespoke men’s footwear, which is male dominant, she has successfully worked on combining elements from both masculine and feminine and brought art to craft discipline.  Although Michelle is currently residing in London, an ocean away, I was still able to ask her about the mind boggling work that she does.

SF: What drove you to shoe making?

MQ: I did my undergrad at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago. I knew they had  a few shoe-making electives and had heard good things about them. I finally got  around to taking the class during my second year there. I pretty much fell in love  with the process right from the beginning, I felt it combined everything I was  pursing at school into one craft. I continued to take the classes and pursue  independent studies in footwear until I graduated. I’m now studying for an MA in  Fashion Footwear at The London College of Fashion. 

SF: What is the hardest thing about making shoes?
 

MQ: There is a lot to be considered when making a shoe, there are so many steps in the process. Everything has to go in a certain order. I guess the hardest part is having the discipline to see it through, especially if you are trying something new and unconventional, you’ll get to a difficult part or something will be going wrong and you can’t skip it or take shortcuts.  It’s like functional sculpture, you take all of these flat materials and you have to mold them into a 3 dimensional object that not only looks good but will support the weight of a human and hold up to concrete.

SF: Tells use a little about the world of cobblers and designers.  Are there ancient rites and traditions passed down through the ages?
 

MQ: First of all, a cobbler is a someone who repairs shoes, it’s a really common  misconception - a shoemaker is called a cordwainer (or just a shoemaker). There  are quite a few people who still practice and teach traditional methods, it is  something that has to be learned person-to-person. I’ve tried to teach myself techniques from books, and they’ve worked alright but I’ve now been working with a bespoke maker and it all makes more sense. It’s really about the little nuances and actually seeing someone do it. Hand shoe-making hasn’t changed much since the processes were perfected 100’s of years ago, it’s really only manufacturing and new materials, etc that have changed. I think designing shoes and making shoes can be very separate things, you need to have a certain amount of knowledge about the making to design but a lot of people just design or just make.

SF: What are your inspirations for your designs?
 

MQ: I get most of my inspiration from different craft techniques and combining several disciplines into one object. When I first started footwear, I was also doing fiber and textiles at school, so I used lots of knitting/crocheting and different fabric manipulations in my shoes. I also love starting with a material and letting that influence the design. I used to work a lot with vintage leathers and let their flaws and imperfections play a part in the final look of the shoes. I think collaborating is also very inspiring, I always really enjoyed group projects in my footwear classes because everyone has different strengths and by bouncing ideas off each other you always end up with something more interesting.

SF:   I see allot of  organic elements with your material choices like hand knit pieces. What types of forms in the urban/country world inspire you?

MQ: I’m definitely a city girl. I grew up outside of Detroit then moved to Chicago and am now in London. I think your environment plays a big part in the work you create. Detroit definitely still resonates in my work. It’s a decaying city, parts of it are completely taken over by nature and I think it’s that type of nature that I find inspiring. I prefer objects that feel like they have a history and are already worn in, I try to invoke that in my work.  I also think growing up down the street from the Ford factory is part of the reason I value craft tradition and hand processes so much. Being surrounded by mass production will do that to you I guess.

SF: People verses Nature/ Shoe verses Foot

MQ: Shoes were invented to protect our feet from nature. They have turned into something more than that but they still serve that basic purpose.
 

SF: Drafting/Building platforms that we stand on you hold allot of control over shaping bones and muscles in peoples bodies. Transversely shaping their structure with your structure. Does this responsibility freak you out or do you kinda love it?

MQ: When you’re making a pair of shoes for a specific individual, you have an immense responsibility to make sure they are comfortable in the shoes and that prolonged wear won’t cause them any problems. It’s a bit different with women because we are used to being uncomfortable in heels and cheap fashion shoes offer little structural support, we will sacrifice being comfortable for looking great, but for men I think comfort and style must go hand in hand. In the bespoke business, your have customers paying a lot of money to have a shoe made to their measurements/ style specification and it’s important that they love the way the shoe feels and how it looks.

SF: What are your feelings about stilts, roller skates and unicycles?
 

MQ: I’d say they are kinda separate from shoes, although some high heels are practically stilts. I really love those old roller skates that were just a metal frame with wheels and you strapped them over your shoes.

SF: I once read this book a called “wise child.”  It was your basic spells and sorcery mystical young adult stuff.  In it one of the characters was learning to weave cloth and messed up the stitching. With that screw up it lead to a gap in her magical protective armor and later in a knife fight almost died because of it. Do you feel like your stitching is a bit like a magical protective shield?

MQ: I don’t think my stitching has magical powers but I can relate to making a small mistake that ends up having a big impact on the final product, whether good or bad.

SF: Do the shoes make the man/woman?

MQ: I think they can. The shoes you wear can totally change the look of your outfit or the way you hold yourself. I always feel better when I have some really great shoes on. People do tend to notice your shoes more so than other accessories I think.

SF: What is your favorite surface to walk on?

MQ: Being in London, I’ve gotten used to walking on very uneven surfaces: loose cement tiles that teeter as you walk over them, cobble stones, cellar doors in the sidewalk that bend under your weight. I think wooden surfaces might be my favorite to walk on, hardwood floors, wooden balconies and decks. I miss the wooden balconies of Chicago.

SF: If  people had wings how do you think that it would effect shoes?

MQ: I guess you would need something that would be easy to land in, maybe something soft like a dancers shoe.

SF: Will there ever be a men’s high heeled shoe?

MQ: There has been a time when men’s high heels were in vogue. I personally won’t be trying to bring it back.  A lot of men’s boots and dress shoes have quite a heel on them. I don’t think they’ll ever be as extreme as women’s currently are.

Baby Dee “The Dance Of Diminishing Possibilities”

“As songs that go forgotten/ Are found remember loud and sung again/The father of all kindness/ The lover of all souls will come to find us/ And if I can remain there/ I will stay/ And I will live another day”

-Safe Inside The Day

It was faith in life and myself that levitated me for weeks above the ever-present doubts of being a dreamer—after happening upon a show of the spell binding performer Baby Dee. Not only did she make me feel powerful and proud of my own avant guard roots, but made my ears sparkle with the true mastery of her music.  She is a seasoned showstopper not only having been a music director for a Catholic Church for ten years, but also a seasoned Coney Island performer. With a wit as fiery as her hair, and voice as powerfully souring and commanding as the piano and harp she plays, I bring to all that is curious an interview with Dee via e-mail: 

The bird on the album cover of “Safe Inside the Day” reminds me of an illustration from the Russian fairytale called the firebird. What’s that bird all about?

The bird is the phoenix. It comes up from the ashes. The painting was done by a friend of mine named Amy Casey. She’s a terrific artist. She shows in Chicago quite a lot actually. Keep your eye out for her.

Speaking of birds, I’ve noticed you have had many airborne hobbies/professions like riding about in a bee costume on some mighty high bicycles, plus a stint as a tree trimmer. Ever thought of being a pilot? What’s this attraction to being airborne?

I love being up high. And my all time hero is a guy named Alberto Santos Dumont who built the first working airship. In his time – late 1800s early 1900s — he was bigger than the Beatles. I could talk all day about him but yes before I started recording my great ambition was to have a pedal powered blimp and fly it into manhattan and land in central park. This was pre 911. Nowadays they’d shoot me down in a

heartbeat.

Your music strikes a great balance between magnificent cut-loose-duch-baggery, as well a brilliant reverential ethereal beauty that is hard to pin down in words. Was it hard to strike this same musical balance when working mainly as a vaudevillian, or church pipe organist?

It’s not so much a balance as it is a personality disorder. Up until about five years ago it was always one or the other and thee stupidity and the tragedy never met.

What is it about Gregorian chants? Personally, I feel like I am being hypnotized whenever I listen to Hildegard Vanbingam.

Well I used to be obsessed with them. But they are problematic. I don’t blame the people who can’t hear it without conjuring up all the evils of a world run by the vatican.

I hear that you played a show in Riga, why did you decide to visit the Baltic countries and what was it like? Did people give you lot’s of fancily wrapped boxes of shitty chocolates? After making a pilgrimage to Lithuania, I came back with armloads of these boxes, and am still trying to unload the stuff.

Riga was lovely. I don’t actually pick where I want to play though. I just go where I’m invited. Hell, I’d play in Toledo if they invited me… no chocolate though

Is there anything about Riga that reminded you of your hometown, Cleveland OH?

Well, it was kind of grimy and uncultured if that’s what you mean but I feel right at home in a place like that. I love it. I a grimy and uncultured kind of girl.

You have been quite the diverse performer, Coney Island, South Bronx Church, Empty Bottle, knitting factory, Pyramid Club, what do you get as a performer from these different types of audiences? Do you like it better when the audience is more interactive and raucous, or still and serious?

I like a mix of both. And I usually get that. I don’t know how it works but usually it does. The only exception to that was last year I played the empty bottle and had asked Mucca Pazza (I adore them) to open. People said “Are you sure you want to do that?” I guess I’d gotten a little cocky but I expected it to work out great. What I didn’t realize was that there is an ever so small amount of loutish and swinish and not very intelligent persons who share my love Mucca Pazza. So it got a little loud and stupid

Which would be OK but it was a one-way street. It’s easier to go from “reverential ethereal beauty” to sleaze than it is to go the other way around. I can usually pull it off but not that night…

What a romantic you are running off too join the circus! Are their any similarities between your circus traveling days and your present musical touring adventuring?

thankfully no.

I noticed that you are quite the collaborator, Antony and the Johnsons, Will Oldham, David Tibet, who else would you like to play with?

Little Richard

You are playing a show in the windy city this tuesday, what do you love/hate about Chicago?

I love everything about chicago. It’s a very cool town. Not too too sceney but it’s very happening. That’s a great combination.

thanks for thinking of me

dee

This rock opera give us reassurance that the seemingly randomness of hand claps and the rock tango tabla beats we step to will one day come together as a gold-plated ruebix cube  proudly displayed on the mantle.  Describing the premise of this saga can sound a bit like a graduate thesis so put your fingers in your ears and hum Get Low while I lift this:

Video Musics is a twenty-minute multimedia video opera based on Hungarian mythology and folk tales consisting of six individual songs/videos that offer their own compact narrative interlocking to form a whole.

O.K, you can take your fingers out of your ears now but continue humming while watching Pee Wee’s big adventure as it blends into the big pink sunset filled windows of the hallucinatory kaleidoscope that is your mind. Notice the cultural theory book laying open and trace the kool aid and gin soaked line: “The journey towards heroism is a process.” Let go of all that esoterical self-analytics and sink into the sonic realm of Rock Waves, the beginning track-gentle wailing guitar reverberating over a low-fi beat. Old school Yamaha keyboards washing up against a slow moving train. There is a fantastical M.C. narrating the descent into the day glow world of speaking liophants and wolf headed princesses collaged with crayon drawings, video stills, and animated color blocks. “Clement Mason,” is the syncopated anchor to these fast talking arias hammering in a heavy base line with a blood leaking stone castle as satisfyingly gory as any unedited Grimm’s fairy tale.  It’s time to get down to business and figure out what this mission is really about, so don’t get to placated by logistics and regal trumpets, because “Sock Hop” is going to scatter into a thousands gravitational pulls. It may seem like a good idea to start singing along to the freaky lullaby about your head separating from your body- but the register drops below the ground and words accelerate so fast your jaws feel like a stretched out rubber band with no spring. Now that we are all nice and discombobulated, along comes “Brimstone Blain”- a comical straightforward interlude with simple thick black lines, catchy phrases, and xylophone hooks. So where do we go from here? The ecstatically claymated birth of the world into the picturesque northwestern river of course. It is all set right by the beauty and mania of creation.  The melding of eastern and western United States mentalities.  As the glory of nature is celebrated (Gideon is living in the northwest presently) with the energy and candy coated pop cultured wit gleaned from a New York City heritage.

I recommend seeing this show live but the DVD can also be watched as an artier Saturday morning cartoon.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about location and where we decided to place our selves. How different landscapes influence mental states. Maybe this is because I am struggling with my own change of scenery, moving from chicago where I lived for the past six years back to my “home town.”  It is hard to explain how I ended up back here.  Mainly I just really missed the pine trees and wanted the past and present put together. It’s been a little like trying to mix oil with water and I wonder if I keep stirring if it will ever mix together.  With maps and charts and telescopes in mind I have asked Lena from Whisker Music who has also been a bit uprooted lately, what she thought about the whole matter.

SF: How have different landscapes shaped you?

Lena: I’ve driven all over this country.  I think it’s given me a great respect for nature.  A Sadness for the Native American population.  Perspective on where we come from as a country and where we are now.  It ’s something everyone should do.  Leave your hometown, leave the norm and see what’s really out there. Put your boots on and walk on the wild side.

SF: When you were living in Richmand VA and  you thought about Chicago was there certain physical places or general feeling that you missed?

Lena:   The lights from music venues and my favorite restaurants at night.  That’s heaven, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

SF: Do you remember where you where when you made the decision to move and what you were looking at?

Lena:  We were in the kitchen, sitting at the table probably drinking Modelo and listening to a lot of Thin Lizzy’s deep cuts.

SF:  What was it about the Oregon landscape that felt like the right element for your video?

Lena:  We were back in Portland for Christmas when we shot the video.  It was Christmas day actually and we initially wanted to shoot it up at crown point and down by the river.  We love the Gorge, it’s the Pacific Northwest’s Grand Canyon.  Anthony used to spend summers down there when he was a kid with his family.  It has good energy there.  I’m in love with those kind of views, it makes me feel like I’m part of something bigger, something beyond me.  It’s very inspiring.  I guess that’s what the video became about.  Nature was completely out of our control that day.  The wind was so fierce!  We couldn’t even shoot up at Crown Point because you would get knocked over by the wind.  There were so many tourists, holding on to railings and sliding around trying to hold onto their car door handles to get inside.  It was freezing wind too.  Kind of felt good though.

Lena: Inspirtional music derived from landscapes: