We pay, sometimes  a whole week’s wages, for these symbols of status that we step in to, scuff up, and throw away.

I had seen his work a few times in galleries and and showings across the South Bronx; both finished pieces and works in progress – recognition as vital as selling a piece.  He told me his artwork has been categorized as assemblage art, sculptures created from various found materials.  Since he was young and living in New Mexico he has followed this tradition of turning discarded materials into forms of art.

photo by Nina Irizarry/Dekit

Sean Paul traces part of his ancestry back to the Tewa Village, Indian Americans of the Southwest.  Now he resides in the South Bronx.  Inside is a personal sanctuary the walls are painted warm tones and adorned with his work. The curtains and draperies are sewn by his hand.  He turned his living room into his studio – cluttered with sneakers and fabrics, but organized with a system only he knows.  His sewing station can be used as a dinner table.  He created a soothing home in neighborhood of static tension.

photo by Nina Irizarry/Dekit

Used to interviews, Sean Paul nonchalantly gave me a recount of his artistic career along with a tour of his private gallery.  He has been sewing since age eleven.  He worked in an antique shop, doing restoration and reupholstery, and worked in the Juliard Costume Shop for many years.  These technical skills he has gathered are essential to bringing his artwork to life.  There is no art without work.  His iconic style of salvaged and altered Nikes began in 2000 upon finding a box of five knock-offs on the street in Chinatown.  After selling a couple pairs, he held on to the others, removed their seams,  cut them open, pulled them apart, and stiffened the fabric phalanges.  The end result was abstract images resembling birds, works flying toward something, hovering somewhere between the second and third dimension.

His newest works are his versions of thangkas, Tibetan silk embroidered tapestries usually depicting Buddha, but his are made from layered bath towels with the centerpiece, the image of Buddha, created from recycled Nikes of course.

His second series came from another box of knock-off Nikes, this one had seventeen sneakers inside and was pushed out of a burning van on Bruckner Boulevard.  Again, he sold a few pairs and went to work on the remainder.  On the cut out canvas harvested from the sneakers he drew Pueblo filigree, rigid decorative marking, around images of Kachina spirits.   In this custom, all things under the sun, including the sun, have a force of life within them.  These personifications of objects and ideas are Kachinas.  They are not quite Gods, but spirits with human like relationships that act as benefactors to people if shown the proper respect.  Following the Kachina ideology, Sean Paul shows the life force that exists even within discarded Nike bootlegs, objects shown respect only until they become sullied or outdated.  From these husks, carcasses, he simultaneously created ceremonial Kachina dolls and throwbacks to the paint marker soaked kicks of childhood.

photo by Nina Irizarry/Dekit

He began the third series of Nike works during a return to New Mexico two years ago.  This was a series of helmets, masks, and icons, his work gaining greater dimension and intricasy.  The subject matter left the realm of his ancestry and concentrated on images of world religions, more easily recognized images.  The phallic face of Ganesha  framed in painted and and decorated packing styrofoam turned into a helmet about two feet tall.  Buddha is seated in a Nike turned lotus flower.  The dark face of the Virgin Mary with a tapestry hanging loosely below.

Sean Paul does not just create art from trash as he replaces the slave children’s stitching with his own, but evokes the beauty that was always within even the most superficial of items.

photo by Nina Irizarry/Dekit

His newest works are his versions of thangkas, Tibetan silk embroidered tapestries usually depicting Buddha, but his are made from layered bath towels with the centerpiece, the image of Buddha, created from recycled Nikes of course.  He has been working on them feverishly, getting them ready for his gallery opening at the Governor’s Island Art Fair.  This show, opened September 3, 2011, is a collective gallery ran by artists and gives them opportunities for residency in 2012.  Each showing artist is given a room and the creative control to decorate and show work however they see fit.

photo by Nina Irizarry/Dekit

Alter pieces and other religious creations made from discarded sneakers show how we no longer pay homage to these idols and deities, but to the Nike gods instead.  We pay, sometimes  a whole week’s wages, for these symbols of status that we step in to, scuff up, and throw away.  These once revered items hang dead from telephone lines on every street, abandoned gods swinging in the breeze.  His art revolves around this idea.  His Virgin is tired and beaten.  His Ganesha is volatile and horny, wearing fake eyelashes, cheap seduction, bought at the dollar store.

Deep in these fashion icons of superficiality and the brutality of capitalism are gods and spirits that need only the right touch to be freed and seen.  To say, ‘One man’s trash is another man’s treasure,’ would not only be trite, but a gross oversimplification as well.

Not only is his work a product of his environment, a commentary on the worship of capitalism in one of the poorest neighborhoods in one of the poorest counties in the country, but a reflection of his life as well.  Deep in Soundview, but his life is surrounded by artwork and beauty that is strange and contemporary and ancient all at the same time.  Deep in these fashion icons of superficiality and the brutality of capitalism are gods and spirits that need only the right touch to be freed and seen.  To say, ‘One man’s trash is another man’s treasure,’ would not only be trite, but a gross oversimplification as well.  A more accurate cliche would be, ‘There is nothing new under the sun.’  Sean Paul does not just create art from trash as he replaces the slave children’s stitching with his own, but evokes the beauty that was always within even the most superficial of items.

photo by Nina Irizarry/Dekit

As of late he has  been working strictly with Nike sneakers for foundational materials, but he showed me many other works from his past, such as a sculpture of a skull with flowing locks swept and dangling to one side of the cheek.  It was carved from a dead branch found in Soundview Park and finished with a dark stain and beeswax leaving it the color of honey.  One could see both the carved lacerations and where the original branch remained unharmed, but the line between them was unclear.  How much of this work was fabrication?  How much of it always existed?  Did he find a wooden skull, naturally formed, in a dark corner of Soundview Park?  I asked him how much of it he actually carved, but he only smiled.

Austin Crimmins

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