Bruce Gray’s “Steelettos” for Stiletto Lovers

Feel like your shoes are welded to your feet? Try these “steelettos” on for size!

My BFF Joan  bemoans the scarcity of fabulous shoes in larger sizes. She should meet prolific metal sculptor Bruce Gray.

Are these big enough for you, Joan?

Inspired by artists like Alexander Calder, Salvador Dali and Claes Oldenburg, Bruce Gray creates outsize stilettos from steel. “I love making sculptures, and I love to have lots of them around me at my studio,” says Bruce. “I enjoy seeing how my art affects people in positive ways. It is rewarding to see people smile, laugh and stare in astonishment.”

Clearly, Bruce has tapped into the same emotions we all feel when someone notices we’re wearing a really fantastic pair of shoes.

There’s a lot of bio information about this prolific artist on his website (www.brucegray.com), so I won’t repeat too much of that here, but I did have a few more probing questions about the artwork —

Claudia: How do your shoe sculptures relate to the rest of your work? Many of your other subjects are hard-bodied and rather masculine (like motorcycles and guitars), or geometric shapes that are inherently hard-edged, but there is a softness and femininity to a shoe, even one welded out of steel. Where does that come from — or, do you disagree?

Bruce: I made my shoe sculptures because high heels are very sculptural, sexy, and fun to look at. I have also taken other interesting forms to make sculptures of, like swiss cheese wedges, insects, keys, guitars, and a wide variety of animals and dinosaurs. The thing they all have in common is that they are comprised of cool shapes which get exaggerated by simplifying and blowing up to large scale. I think that guitars and even some motorcycles have curvy, sleek and feminine shapes. The body of a guitar certainly has been compared to a woman’s hourglass figure. The femininity of a welded high heel shoe sculpture comes from the delicate straps, thin stiletto heels, and our association of sexiness and glamour with such impractical yet mesmerizing footwear.

Claudia: What can metal convey about the shape or function or other property of a shoe that a real shoe cannot?

Bruce: Metal is a hard substance as opposed to the usual materials used for women’s shoes like leather, velvet, and satin. The hard edges, size and weight of a metal shoe force the viewer to look at the shoe not as an everyday item of clothing, but as an art object. It is the same kind of thing that Claes Oldenburg did with making soft squishy drum sets and toilets, just kind of in reverse.

Claudia: Your proportions are obviously distorted from real life proportions; can you talk about that a little bit? Do you do that with your other objects, too? Do people consciously notice that you’ve done it?

Bruce: When I take an ordinary object and blow it up to a large size, that makes it much more dramatic and eye catching. I have done this with many of my sculptures. I also usually simplify the design a bit, and maybe add some unusual found objects to give the sculpture a stylized, fun and “cartoony” feel.

Claudia: Your sculptures have been featured in a number of movies and TV shows. Tell me a little bit about the process of getting your work featured in films and television. Is that easier because you’re CA-based?

Bruce: It is certainly an advantage to be living in Los Angeles, as the set decorator will almost always want to see the work in person before they make a decision on renting.  Often, time is a major factor as well.  I have had many of my sculptures in hundreds of TV shows and movies over the years, but it is unfortunately not something that happens very frequently. Much of the filming is done out of state or in other countries these days because various locations will offer huge financial incentives to have the features shot in their towns. My work is fairly well known in the film biz, so when I get a call for something it is usually someone who has used my work before or they were referred to me by someone who has, although sometimes they find me through my website (www.brucegray.com).

Claudia: You’ve photographed a lot of shoes for the High Heel Shoe Museum (www.highheelshoemuseum.com). Do you see that work more as fine art or commercial art? Where is the fine line? For example, it must be harder to fool around with proportion when the shoe is real (some of these look like you may have done that anyway, but it’s hard to tell for sure).

Bruce: I see those as fine art photographs, like a still life kind of thing. I usually try to use interesting or unusual backgrounds, and some dramatic lighting. You can still have fun with proportions by having the shoes at different distances from the camera. I think that there is a lot of photography that could be classified as both fine art and commercial. You can see many examples of that in books on shoes, or on the websites of any of the leading famous shoe designers.

You know what they say: Big shoes, big shoe closet. For those of us whose homes and offices are less than palatial, Bruce does make a few full-metal shoes in more manageable sizes. The table sculpture is pretty much life-size (except for you, Joan, LOL), and comes in brushed or painted aluminum. And that multi-shoe wall sculpture wouldn’t take up any floor space at all.

Visit Bruce Gray’s website at www.brucegray.com.

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By Claudia Lynch, artist and shuzsociety “art & sole” columnist.  For more about Claudia Lynch, artist and creator of ShoeStories™, please visit her web site at www.claudialynch.com.

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