The nation wide custom shoe contest put on by Vans Custom Culture division has been whittled down to four final high schools. Last week a total of 67, 202 votes were cast from around the world at the Vans Custom Culture website. The finalist schools are: Eastern High School in Kentucky, Rio Rancho High School in New Mexico, Plainview-Old Bethpage/JFK High School in New York, and Franklin Pierce High School in Washington. The students who created the custom Vans to represent their high schools will now meet in Southern California for the Vans Custom Culture Finals. In California students will have the chance to tour the Vans headquarters in hopes to win the grand prize of $10,000 for their school’s art department.
Another side story brewing on the Vans Custom Culture FaceBook page is a bit of controversy dealing with the voting process. The comments are an entertaining read to see how upset some people are at Vans. Any students should be happy that they had the chance to compete as nothing even close to this opportunity was given by shoe companies when I was in high school. I’m glad to say custom shoes are now a highly recognized art category. Hopefully teachers and principals will use some of the negativity towards Vans as a learning opportunity on how to behave in competition.
Be sure to check back to PaintOrThread.com to see which high school wins the grand prize!
I’m putting money on Rio Rancho…the pair with the face, paintbrushes as a mustache, and computer text in the bottom left corner looks amazing.
