“Hope With Wings”

“Hope With Wings” by Susan Brubaker Knapp

Susan Brubaker Knapp here. I just completed a pair of art shoes I am submitting for the Kick Off Your Heels fundraiser. There is a lot of heart disease in my family, which is part of why I wanted to help out by making a pair of shoes. I have one grandmother I never got to meet because she died of a heart attack at age 61. It is amazing to me that so little heart disease research and education has been focused on women. This is my small contribution to rectifying that situation. 

Here’s how I made my shoes:

I started with blue pumps purchased for $2 at a local thrift shop, sanded them lightly with sandpaper, and painted them with gesso. The shoe in the front is the original color, and the shoe in the back is painted with gesso:

I painted them sky blue with brown tree branches:

I bought the nest, eggs, silk dogwood blooms and the bird at local craft stores, and auditioned them:

The birds did not resemble any I’d ever seen in nature, so I trimmed their feathers and repainted them to look like chickadees, my favorite bird. Then I glued wads of paper inside the shoes, and glued or pinned in the moss, lichens, nest, eggs, birds and dogwood blosssoms. Here they are, all done!