Sneakers have an undeniable currency in pop culture. They are status symbols, testaments to brand allegiance, enmeshed in many ways with their owners’ identity.
Artist Gary Lockwood, who is also known as Freehand Profit, has created artworks that play into and expand upon the meaning of sneakers. Inspired by hip-hop’s sampling and mixing of musical phrases and beats into new forms, Lockwood contorts and manipulates Air Jordans, Yeezys, Reebok Instapumps and Nike Air Max sneakers, among many other coveted and rare kicks, into masks with a history-tripping blend of tribal, industrial and pop culture associations. With a look that blends the ancient and sci-fi, the masks evoke a “Mad Max: Fury Road” futurescape where ordinary, mass market materials are remade into talismans for intimidation or protection, like 10th-century samurai masks crafted for a postindustrial age.
Credit: Colin Douglas Gray
Credit: Colin Douglas Gray
“Whether it’s the DJ sampling a record or a graffiti writer twisting an alphabet, or B-boys twisting their bodies, MCs with the wordplay, it’s all about reimagining the world around you. And I twist the sneakers in those same ways,” says Lockwood, speaking via Zoom from his Los Angeles home.
“Face Value” at SCAD FASH Museum of Fashion + Film features 30 of Lockwood’s masks including a wolf-like creature with bared white teeth and an exoskeleton of iridescent leather. Other masks sport gas masks that nod to the protective gear worn by graffiti artists — another big inspiration for Lockwood — as they tag walls. Curated by Rafael Gomes, director of fashion exhibitions. “Face Value” is Lockwood’s first museum exhibition, which includes work beyond his iconic masks. “I’ve also branched out from there in a number of different ways, including, like you’ll see in ‘Face Value,’ a taxidermied coyote made out of used sneakers.” Inspired by his visits to natural history museums, Lockwood sees that sneaker taxidermy as a promising new phase.
Credit: Colin Douglas Gray
Credit: Colin Douglas Gray
Lockwood says he got his start as an artist writing graffiti in eighth grade, when he also picked up his alias: the “freehand” referring to his drawing talent and the “profit” to his early determination “to make a living off of what I draw.” Freehand Profit is also a Google-friendly way for fans to find Lockwood on the internet, since searches for “Gary Lockwood” tend to return the actor and star of Stanley Kubrick’s film opus “2001: A Space Odyssey.”
Lockwood has designed more than 200 masks since 2010, when he first conceptualized the masks as forged from the remains of a post-apocalyptic world divided by tribes identified by sneaker brand. Depending upon his deadline, Lockwood will spend anywhere from days to years on a sneaker mask and has created original artworks for basketball players including Kevin Durant and Iman Shumper and musicians like Method Man as well as brands like Nike, Adidas, Puma, Reebok and Foot Locker. Though Lockwood has developed a solid fan base, he’s also run afoul of sneakerheads who object to his repurposing of highly coveted, valuable shoes. “There are folks out there that will never enjoy seeing what I do, because they just value the sneakers that much,” he admits.
Credit: Colin Douglas Gray
Credit: Colin Douglas Gray
For Lockwood, the Nike Air Max is a personal favorite. He currently has over 108 in his own collection that he keeps in clear drop-front boxes so he can see them. But he adds, it is important to also wear them, which keeps the polyurethane midsoles from crumbling.
As he notes on his website of the intentional contradictions contained in the work, his masks “reflect a balance of the celebratory aspects of our humanity and culture with the awareness that we are a world at war, plagued by injustice, oppression and environmental destruction.”
EXHIBITION PREVIEW
“Face Value: Sneaker Masks by Freehand Profit”
Through Sept. 11. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays; 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Thursdays; noon-5 p.m. Sundays. $10; $8 seniors/military; $20 family of three or more; $5 college students with ID and alumni; free for under age 14, SCAD students, staff, faculty and members. SCAD FASH Museum of Fashion + Film, 1600 Peachtree St. NW, Atlanta. 404-253-3132, scadfash.org.
