FOOTPRINT, 2023

The shoes are made from white leather and black Pinatex with painted wooden platforms heels, standing on hand drawings printed on vinyl fabric, 2023.

The connection between Amber Ambrose Aurele born in 1987 & Albert van der Weide born in 1949, was trough Marga van Mechelen, an art historian and publicist. She is Albert’s wife and became Amber’s teacher at the University. This friendship led to creating FOOTPRINT together. They spoke often about their relationship, similarities and differences between their fields of works, design and visual arts.

This awakened the desire to create a work together, in which both disciplines, the design and making of shoes by Amber and the drawings and installations by Albert where the starting points.

They decided to take this on and start from scratch. What as the urgency of the collaboration and what are the common sources of inspiration they wondered aloud. And parallel to that they started confronting each other with sketches, ideas, going straight forward or wandering in side idea’s. Thinking and acting in an inimitable pendulum movement with the perspective of creating something tangible. Many different layers emerge in their work: arts meets fashion, diversity, making connections, coming closer together and at the same time during Covid-19 distance, and what is distance?

The result of this process are four drawings on the floor on which are four pairs of shoes arranged. The signs and shoes refer to each other in terms of content and style and for a symbiosis.