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Art

Take some art for a walk

You won't want to leave these colorful, distinctive shoes in the closet for long.

By LENNIE BENNETT
Published March 1, 2007

These are among several styles of homemade and painted shoes by Mik Wright, who will sell them at the Gasparilla Festival of Arts.
	[Gasparilla Festival of the Arts]

Art, we like to say, is good for the soul. In the case of Mik Wright and Barbara Volk, it's also good for the sole.

Pardon the pun, but the play on words plays into the couple's philosophy about their life's work, which is to make shoes.

Artistic shoes. Shoes Wright claims will probably be the funkiest you ever slip onto your feet and, positively, the most comfortable.

Even more unusual, their shoes will be among the more expected offerings of glass, ceramics, jewelry, painting and sculpture at the Gasparilla Festival of the Arts on Saturday and Sunday.

Wright, 57, said in a recent telephone interview that he came to his cobbler vocation through necessity. He grew up in Africa, where his parents had emigrated from Ireland after World War II. They moved around a lot for his father's work, from Rhodesia to Zambia then Botswana. A motorcycle accident in 1968 left his right knee shattered and shortened his leg. Normal shoes were out of the question. He made do for a while with a pair "made by an old Italian man, the only cobbler my mother could find in Africa, who made this incredibly ugly pair for me."

A business is born

Serendipitously, he met a female artist who worked with leather and taught him some basics. He made a pair of shoes for himself. Then he and she fell in love and married. He began making more shoes. Bright, colorful shoes made by hand with orthopedic correctness. His younger brother had entrepreneurial ambitions and imported them to Great Britain, where they sold well.

"My stall at Covent Garden," Wright says, "was probably the most photographed one there. You could see my shoes and their colors from very far away."

When his brother died, Wright, by then divorced, decided to try the U.S. market.

"There were so many Americans who would come to London and tell me I should sell my shoes there, that I should move to California."

He stayed in California for a few years but didn't take to the fast pace. He tried the Boston area for several more years. Didn't like that much, either. He traveled a lot, selling most of his shoes at art shows and outdoor festivals. Home, he realized, could be almost anywhere.

When he saw West Virginia, he says, "it was almost heaven. Nobody goes to West Virginia. It's almost like Swaziland used to be, with pristine wilderness, a low population."

He had remarried by then, American artist Barbara Volk, and together they settled in Lewis County, where they own several hundred acres.

"We mostly live off the land," Wright says.

And together they make shoes under the label Those Shoes.

"Originally I called my business Likhya, which means 'my home' in Zulu," Wright says. "But people in America would always say, 'Look at those shoes!' so I renamed them."

Unique designs

Each is handmade, embossed and painted. He sells eight stock styles - high- and low-tops, sandals, clogs and boots - starting at $215. Sizes start at a women's 5 and go up to men's 12.

"We use high-quality leathers and soft, flexible soles," he says.

They do all the work themselves, cutting, fabricating, mixing the dyes for the toe designs and applying them with an air-brush and detailing by hand with acrylic paints. The shoes last for years with proper care, he says, but if time takes its toll, he will refurbish them for $40.

Wright's real love is customized shoes, the special orders onto which he puts gemstones or Volk's hand-beaded embellishments. For an art teacher, he made clogs that Volk decorated with a portrait of Vincent Van Gogh and a detail from Starry Night.

A native of Ukraine ordered bright blue fringed boots with reminders of his country, including sunflowers painted on the toe. Those shoes cost much more, some as much as $2,000.

Wright and Volk's dream, he says, is to have enough custom business to discontinue the stock designs.

"I've been making them for 30 years and even though each one is an original, I have to make a lot of them and I'm getting burned out."

The reality of his business is a lot of travel. This year he comes to Florida for Gasparilla and the Winter Park Arts Festival. He'll go to art shows in Vail and Telluride, Colo.; Jackson Hole, Wyo.; the New Orleans Jazz Festival and other venues in the Northeast and Midwest.

Volk, who keeps four horses, has become an equine expert, specializing in podiatry, and she hopes to expand that business.

Both want to stay home more.

But for now, he's working long hours making enough shoes to bring to Tampa. He'll have about 300 pairs on display, enough variety for anyone's shoe fetish.

Wright himself only owns two pairs.

Lennie Bennett can be reached at 727 893-8293 or lennie@sptimes.com

Those Shoes

Check out this distinctive footwear online at www.thoseshoes.com. The site also showcases bags, checkbook covers, eyeglasses cases and more. Some smaller accessories are available for purchase over the Internet.

[Last modified February 28, 2007, 09:57:18]