Art Kicks

University of Oregon advertising student Evan Schultz knows he could make more money doing grunt work in the food industry or in landscaping, but he’d rather kick back and draw on a pair of shoes.

Luckily, he’s got a large handful of adoring fans who gladly pay him up to $179 to do just that.

Schultz, 22, is the creator of Art Kicks, a one-man “company” that transforms white pairs of Vans slip-on shoes into one-of-a-kind works of art. Schultz will draw just about anything his clients want, from Alice in Wonderland themes to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly tributes to a montage of unicorns destroying a city’s skyline.

Oddly, it wasn’t artistic inspiration that prompted this quirky Albuquerque native to enter the world of shoe art — it was poverty.

“During my junior year, I was really poor and very hungry,” Schultz says. “I came home from class and I realized I had probably fifty-eight cents in my bank account. All I had to eat was ravioli and noodles from Costco that I bought nine months earlier.”

He thought back to his freshman year, when two people — a friend and his then-girlfriend — had asked him to draw on their shoes. He remembered getting lots of compliments on the art, and he recalled the friend later admitting he would gladly pay for a second decorated pair. Schultz took him up on the offer.

“He went out and bought white Vans and he gave me $30, or something,” Schultz says. “And I said, wow, this is totally the answer.”

That night, Schultz bought ground beef, salad makings and some dressing with his shoe money and ate a “real meal” for the first time in what seemed like forever.

In a matter of months, everything blew up. Schultz launched a website, artkicks.blogspot.com, and offered to draw on shoes for free during the entire month of April. His offer earned him more publicity than he could have imagined when he and his advertising classmates met several executives in New York City while sporting pairs of Schultz originals.

“These professionals with six-figure salaries would talk to (my classmates) and say, ‘Hey, you have really cool shoes, you must be a designer,’” Schultz says. “It was huge for me.”

Next thing he knew, he upped the price of custom shoes from $80 to $100 to $139 and finally to the current going rate, $179. Only University of Oregon students are entitled to discounts.

“There was a critical moment where I breached that gap between students and people with money,” Schultz says. “All of the sudden, people in their thirties and forties wanted in on it, and I thought, it’s stupid for me not to charge them more.”

And charge he did. He began getting shoe requests from both sides of the U.S., some of them uninspiring and some of them fascinating. One New York advertising executive has commissioned seven pairs of shoes, all of which he let Schultz dream up based on bits of inspiration he sends to Eugene.

“He buys me things off of Amazon, and he says, ‘This is going to inspire you for the next pair,’” Schultz says. “And the next week I’ll get a box with the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory DVD and I’ll have to use stills from it for the shoes.”

Schultz initially thought his creations would have only limited appeal, mostly to West Coast skateboarders and surfers who wear Vans every day. Somehow, though, Art Kicks seems to transcend typical boundaries — and thanks to the shoe’s universal appeal, Schultz is currently working on his fortieth pair of Art Kicks.

The number seems huge, but Schultz knows it can get even bigger with some strategic advertising moves and a solid source of funding. He doesn’t look much like a future advertising executive in his Buddy Holly black frame glasses, his studded belt and his worn pair of Chuck Taylors, but he has impressed and brushed shoulders with enough of them that he could be well on his way to creating something bigger than just a blog and a Twitter feed.

Ad executive Simon Mainwaring, a University of Oregon alumnus, “really changed my perspective, and he said, ‘You could really do something with this,’” Schultz said. “His perspective was, ‘wow, this could be your job, there’s something about this that’s more authentic.’”

For now, though, Schultz will stick to his low-key under-the-table operation to pay his rent — and who knows? He might tackle some of Simon Mainwaring’s big ideas when he graduates in the spring.