Categories
Archive

Students Enter Vans Designing Contest

By Abby Douglas, Staff Writer

Have you ever wished you could design your own pair of shoes? Three students from McClatchy are doing just that, through the 2015 Vans Custom Culture Contest. The contest allows 3,000 high schools around the United States to sign up and receive four pairs of blank white Vans. The schools can then choose artistically talented students to customize the shoes according to the contest’s four themes: Art, Music, Action Sports, and Local Flavor. The designers can be as creative as they want– as long as each of the four pairs of shoes focuses on one theme.

After all the designs are submitted, Vans chooses five Finalist schools and flies the artists to a Final Event in New York City. During this all expenses paid trip, surprise celebrity judges pick one Grand Prize Winner. The Final Event is filled with other fun festivities, including prizes from Journeys, Truth, and Laguna College of Art and Design.vans 2

The Grand Prize is huge. The winning student designers will receive $50,000 for their high school’s art program and a chance to have the winning shoe design sold in Vans retail stores. The four runners up also receive $4,000 in funds for their schools.

McClatchy’s own ceramics teacher, Johnathan Hubbard, got student designers involved and made sure McClatchy was among the 3,000 schools to be sent blank Vans. CKM’s three student designers are John Henry Sedrome, Valentina Polendo-Rodriguez, and Matt Cowley.

John Henry (‘15) chose the “Art” theme and drew the inspiration for his creative Vans from two Hindu gods, Ganesh and Suvannamaccha. He says that his designs are a result of “the clash of different subcultures mixed in with my personal aesthetic.” John Henry has been customizing objects long before this contest– as a kid, he used to draw all over the walls and floors of his house. When he’s not designing a pair of Vans, John Henry enjoys sewing, painting, and drawing.

Though he claims to have gotten involved in the contest because he was “bored in school and swimming hadn’t started,” Matthew (‘15) took an everyday concept– “Sports”– and made a unique pair of Vans with an Aztec influence. His goal was to create a marketable shoe (keeping in mind that the winning design could be sold in Vans stores), and he chose the sport of surfing to make a fun design. Matthew has taken art classes at McClatchy and has loved drawing since elementary school.vans 3

Like the other designers, Valentina (‘15) has been an artist her entire life. She remembers looking up to her talented brother and starting to carry a sketchbook with her wherever she went. As she got older, Valentina began to be influenced by graffiti art and calligraphy, which shows through in her Vans design. Choosing the theme “Music,” she placed elements like a singing mouth, music notes, and colors to represent “the many emotions one can get from just one person singing.” Though she was reluctant to participate in the contest at first because she was worried that it would get in the way of school work, Valentina says that it has been “an amazing memory of my senior year in high school.”

For the fourth pair of blank Vans, Valentina and John Henry collaborated under the theme “Local Flavor.” The two designers decided to center the shoes on Sacramento’s “City of Trees” nickname. John Henry painted abstract tree designs on the sides, while Valentina made the Tower Bridge span across the tongues of both shoes. They also included a Sacramento sunset and view of the river. Valentina drew graffiti words “Sac” and “Town” on the backs. They hope that this beautiful design will give the Vans judges a taste of McClatchy’s home city.

    OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAMr. Hubbard says of the experience, “It was nice to watch the three different student artists work together and collaborate on a piece, and spend a month or so working in a medium that they weren’t familiar with. A lot of problem-solving and great collaborative effort. I’m very proud of them.”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *