A young artist being encouraged to be creative is likely one of the strongest but simplest things an adult can do. Anyone with an artistic outlet from a young age could name someone they looked up to or were influenced by. Dominic Chambrone aka The Shoe Surgeon surely agrees with encouraging kids evident by recently giving his time to a group of teenagers at the Sonoma, California Boys and Girls Club for a sneaker art workshop. During the class Dominic shared how he got into customizing, how he was able to turn it into a full time career, and what goes into some of his daily work.
The Shoe Surgeon’s work has transitioned to the reconstruction variety after starting out painting shoes years ago with the typical Angelus leather paint. Since customizing through reconstruction is very long process for the workshop Dominic gave the kids a slight hands on insight into some of the skills needed for his work. He provided laser engraved cutouts of the Nike Air Force 1 low silhoutte on VEG tan leather to give letting the kids cut out the panels from leather scraps of python, ostrich, pony hair, metallic leather and more to glue to the laser cutouts. As well paper packets of sneaker templates to bring their imagination and ideas to life were made of AF1s, Dunks, Shelltoes, Chucks, and Sk8-Hi.
It was cool man.. The funniest part was the girls that attended just because I made shoes for Justin Bieber. I even had scraps from his gold shoes I did and gave them to them. They were crying! Ha ha ha!- The Shoe Surgeon
