Make Your Booty UI Art Students Walkin’ Fine In Blue Suede, Moose Skin Shoes

When University of Idaho fashion design student Scott Hebeisen walks into his first job interview, he’ll be wearing his resume - blue suede shoes he made himself.

Hebeisen is one of several UI students putting heart and sole into hand-crafted shoes for a sculpture class assignment.

The same week shoe industry giant Nike inquired about moving to Idaho, a shoemaking workshop is teaching these UI undergrads how to keep the state’s footwear manufacturing niche all sewed up - the old-fashioned way.

Inside the basement art studio, students busily punch holes through elk hides, clip swatches of rabbit fur and double stitch sections of suede together with waxed linen thread and sewing awls.

“A lot of shoemakers now have fancy supplies like the industrial sewing machines,” said Glenn Grishkoff, a visiting art professor from Pennsylvania’s Westminster College who directed the shoemaking workshop. “I show students they can use anything to make a shoe.”

Most students rummaged for discarded $5 suede jackets at the local Goodwill store.

“When I picked out this jacket I was like, ‘Hey, blue suede shoes,”’ Hebeisen said, attaching silver buttons to his slate-blue loafers.

Grishkoff, 32, has made shoes from vinyl, canvas, and even an old neoprene wetsuit, which he turned into a nifty pair of beachcombers.

He labors about eight hours on each pair, at a cost of between $20 and $30. His own shoe closet would make most footwear fetishists envious - red leather boots with big, black buckles, comfy, fur-lined moccasins and suede top-siders with tiny metal baubles, for starters.

He was first inspired by a pair of buffalo hide boots for sale at a fair. He liked the concept of hand-made footwear, but found the rugged buffalo look too primitive.

“I wanted something more contemporary, so I started making my own shoes out of bright colored leather and backpack scraps.”

While practical, Grishkoff’s unique shoes also serve as an effective art showcase each time someone asks where he got them.

“They’re functional but they are also a piece of art that deviates from art on the wall or a pedestal,” he said. “I can talk about the art on my foot.”

He’s frequently asked to make custom shoes. Musician James Taylor once asked him for a pair. But he’s refused so far, to avoid commercializing his work.

“Shoes have always had a colorful history as status symbols,” Grishkoff said. “People are being killed for their shoes in some places.”

For Grishkoff, teaching others to make their own shoes is more gratifying than marketing his own designs. He travels throughout the U.S. and internationally giving workshops in both shoemaking and brushmaking, his other specialty.

Moscow’s abundance of low-priced natural materials is a geographical advantage for aspiring shoemakers, he said.

“It is very rare in a city to find top quality elk and moose leather,” he said. “Students here have that added benefit.”

For $25, Judith Pringle, 43, purchased enough tanned elk hide from Moscow Hide and Fur for a pair of above-the-ankle boots, custom fitted for her narrow foot and high instep.

“I think it would be a wonderful goal to be as independent as possible and not rely on stores,” said Pringle, a social worker and art therapist at St. Josephs Regional Medical Center in Lewiston. “I get tired of going to places where the shoes don’t fit.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 color photos