Artist Statement - Sarah Snyder

When I first heard about the Step Up program, I was so excited to start working on the shoes. I remember going to the very first meeting and sitting in the auditorium looking at the PowerPoint with all the artists we could choose. Across the screen came an artist by the name of Frida Kahlo. I saw her pieces and from that moment I had this thought in my head that I was going to choose her for my artist.

Frida’s paintings were just so interesting to me. The way she used symbolism in her paintings, and how it really showed who she was as a person. I remember going through some of her paintings and researching her art. The way she used all the things that happened in her life in her art is truly amazing. When looking at her art, I loved her paintings of herself. She always surrounded herself with beautiful things such as flowers or butterflies. So I chose two paintings to paint on each one of my shoes, one of Frida herself and one of just a girl.

Doing all the studies, I was so passionate about capturing the paintings I’m just the right way. I remember drawing on the papers, and thinking about how I was going to incorporate a way to tie the two paintings together. In both paintings, the women were surrounded by either flowers or butterflies. So I took the two women and tied them together using the butterflies.

On the first shoe, I chose to paint Frida on my first shoe. In the original painting by Frida she is shown crying butterflies. I thought this piece was just so beautiful. The way the butterflies are shown as tears. The piece made me think “beauty is pain”, because of the way she is crying but the butterflies are beautiful. I knew I was definitely going to use this painting for my shoes.

The second shoe I chose a painting of a girl with really long beautiful hair, with all sorts of things in her hair. There were birds on little twigs and flowers. This is when I added a little twist from the original. I decided to add butterflies in her hair as well, that way I could tie the shoes together. I just thought that the painting was just the perfect painting to match the one of Frida.

On my shoes, I changed some things from the original paintings. On the first shoe, instead of having her crying the butterflies, I had her crying real tears and then having them be turned into butterflies and had them wrap around the shoe. On the second shoe, I added the butterflies to her hair along with the birds and the flowers. I decided to wrap her beautiful hair the whole way around the shoe like I did before with the butterflies to again tie them together.

I had an amazing time creating these shoes and I’m so excited for the community to finally be able to see them. We’ve waited so long for them to be put out on display. I can’t wait to see what everyone thinks of them and to watch them go around to find them all.