By: Dallas Jones –
Update: The results were posted on May 11th for the top 5 schools and unfortunately Lincoln Southeast did not receive enough votes to move on to the final round.
Southeast students ranked in the top 50 out of 3,000 schools in the nation who submitted to the 2017 Vans Custom Culture contest and competed for a chance to make the top 5 to travel to Los Angeles.
Daniel Ruth, an LSE art teacher, loves to give his artists opportunities throughout the year to show off their art talent and for the last few years, he’s been offering students the chance to design their very own Vans shoe to enter into competition. This year, he offered up the opportunity again and four Southeast students took charge which led to big results.
Senior Rachel Kleve worked on the ‘action sport’ shoe; sophomore Madisen Bell worked on the ‘music’ and ‘local flavor’ shoe; senior Caitlin Hoppe worked on the ‘local flavor’, ‘music’, and ‘art’ shoe; and senior Grace Larsen worked on the ‘art’, ‘local flavor’, and ‘music’ shoes along with a number of other art students who gave input during the design and building phases.
They received the designs in the middle of February and worked nonstop to finish them for pictures by April. Going through ten designs total, they decided on the designs that they thought not only reflected the expert artistry they are capable of, but also the ones they liked the most.
Using the four themes given to them from the competition, they created four vastly different but also widely well put together designs that any artist would be proud of. The ‘action sport’ shoes was turned into a rollerskate with the design replicating the bottom of a skateboard littered with stickers and drawings. The ‘music’ shoes was built with broken glass showing the different interpretations people have of what music means to them. The ‘local flavor’ shoes was made to bring light to the declining honey bee population, the state insect. Finally, the ‘art’ shoes was representative of the art projects in Lincoln and the beauty this city holds.
Of course, not everything was smooth sailing; they faced barriers while building the shoes. The most prominent being that they have never worked with canvas, the material the shoes are made of, before. In addition, gluing the glass shards on took multiple tries before they used industrial style adhesive.
The shoes made a lot of publicity in the community with LPS writing an article and interviewing the students for the LPS blog. Students had until May 11th to vote to send the students and their shoes on an all expenses paid trip to Los Angeles where the top 5 schools would then present their creations to a panel of celebrity judges. The winning school is to receive $50,000.
