Andy Warhol Loved Shoes

Andy Warhol loved shoes.

Shaking awake. Scrambling to start: 80 miles to go, highway of stacked heels. Four hours to kill in platform slides, sliding back, into sleep. Home again, home again – words and shoes.

Road trip, shoe trip, shoe tripping. 

Andy Warhol loved shoes. Drawings, paintings, screen prints, diamond dust on Arches paper, watercolors and fine line, singletons and saucy pairs. Posed and poised, arranged in groups, layered and splayed.

I wonder about hypnosis.The symphonic properties of splattering paint. That was Pollock; this is Warhol. That was Creecy; this is Parrott.

Three teenagers. Insufficient sleep. A small car. They struggle to fit the easel into the trunk; art supplies are piled in back for painting class, now once a week, 80 miles along a highway of stacked heels, heels in my back, stacked back. To draw shoes? Who doesn’t love to draw shoes?

Perhaps; he’ll start with still lifes after all. But he prefers to divine the human expression – the squinted eye, the hollowed cheek.

He draws shoes, he draws from shoes, he delivers shoes to receiving blankets of linen and page: Docksiders in art class, Keds in the kitchen. Alive and squirming, each is a surprising birth.

“Chiaroscuro,” he explains. “Like Rembrandt. Shadow and light, for dramatic effect.”

I want to stay in bed and dream.

So I dream I can dream: I get up, I shower, I paint my face, I face the world and never leave my bed. A world away I drive the car, the kids, the supplies. I deposit a pair (of kids) at the corner of campus. I loop a pair (of Keds) over telephone wires. The artist is given over, tenderly, to the artist.

Bottled water, maps, directions, complaints and rushing. The dog looks confused.

The older two will wander paths and buildings. I’ll seek a café, a bookstore, a plug for heat, a place to dream of words and sleep, of red and sleep, of Fauves and sleep, Ocean Park and sleep. My fingers will work the keyboard even as I close my lids; my child to paint his dreams, and paint his dreams, and paint his dreams.

“Where are my shoes?” he hollers.

“Under the couch,” I say.

“The charcoal and blending stumps?”

“Under the bills,” I say.

Andy Warhol loved shoes. Presented as gifts, as calling cards, as portraits of self. Sexy shoes, vintage shoes, coquettish shoes, celebrity shoes. Alice B. Shoes, created the year of my birth.  A la recherche du Shoe Perdu.

Pumps with pointed toes, Slingbacks and little bows, Patents, in ruby and rose.

I want to stay in bed and dream. So I dream I can dream: I get up, I shower, I paint my face, I face the world; a world away my child learns to paint.  Hypnotic roads, the heat, the symphony of splattered hues. I dream I can dream: I’m delivering shoes.