By Katie Scarvey
kscarvey@salisburypost.com
Brenda Zimmerman can’t walk through a thrift store these days without making a beeline for the shoes. That’s because she’s always on the lookout for interesting ones to inspire her creativity for the FootLoose Project that she started, now in its second year.
FootLoose Project to Stomp Out Alzheimer’s culminates in a silent auction today of shoe-themed art, from 6-8 p.m. in the Trinity Oaks Retirement Community’s special events room, at 728 Klumac Road. Guests will enjoy a reception, catered by Trinity Oaks. The public is invited.
Several well-known photographers have submitted work, including Ben Martin, who has given a print that is from a 1954 negative of shoes taken outside of a school in Korea. Wayne Hinshaw has donated a photo of the feet of women from three different generations in one family.
Clyde donated a shoe filled with vintage items that are reminders of the things people lose with Alzheimer’s. The piece is called “Lost Soul.”
Concord artist Sarah Mann sculpted an elaborate papier mache piece called “Kangaroo Shoe,” featuring a mother and baby kangaroo.
Many of the shoes play with words, including “Tap Shoe” by Pam and Mike Murphy, which features an actual faucet.
Students from Carson High School got in on the act as well, crafting donations for the show.
Zimmerman herself, activity director at the Lutheran Home at Trinity Oaks, also flexed her creative muscles for the show. One of her creations this year is “Walk a Mile in My Shoes,” which features maps applied on the outside of a pair of shoes. Inside one shoe is the image of a healthy brain; in the other is the image of an Alzheimer’s brain.
She also covered a boot with sheet music and mounted a toy xylophone on it — a much tougher task than she anticipated, she says. That piece is called “Foot Note.”
The FootLoose project was inspired, Zimmerman says, by the Artful Bra Project, a fundraiser in which artists create fanciful brassieres to raise money used to battle breast cancer.
Zimmerman accepts shoes from every level of workmanship — from schoolchildren to professional artists.
There will also be a “Re-Sole” department that will offer some art from last year’s show, and the Salisbury-Rowan Quilters Guild will have their Alzheimer’s quilt on exhibit as well.
All proceeds from the event will go to the Walk to End Alzheimer’s (formerly called the Memory Walk). Last year, the project raised almost $1,000, Zimmerman said.