Brandon Adams Sneakers and Art

At the intersection of high ambition, great art and custom sneakers, you will find Dope Street - and none more fitting of these than Brandon Adams' art and vision on great shoes, big boy figures and art.

If you're not familiar with the name Brandon Adams you may be familiar with his art and don't even know it. His Dallas local murals include Hello Goodbye and Today is the Day in the Downtown Art Walk in Greenville, TX, among plenty of others in the Dallas area.

If you're serious about your flex, if you want the same scope of vision on your kicks that goes into 50-foot tall murals, if you want to get your hands on one-of-a-kind sneakers with a pedigree featured in city art walks and local art history and celebrity cribs, you got to get down to Dope Street Shoes and get your hands on some exclusive Brandon Adams' offerings.

Brandon Adams' art has inspiration foundations in music and features musicians and celebrities influential to his childhood and our culture. From Dallas Mavericks to 7-Eleven to Frida - if a picture is worth a thousand words, Brandon Adams' murals are entire stories and slices of time captured in layers of bright colors and flaring highlights.

Brandon's amazing talent for color and composition is well documented and justly rewarded, but amazing to this Dope Street admirer is his sense of scale - to go from a mural across the side of a building to a sneaker with less than a couple dozen square inches to paint! Brandon has an incredible talent for filling every bit of space with something bright and eye-catching and discernable without overwhelming and crowding out the medium that is the sneaker. It's the pinnacle of difference between incorporating a sneaker as a canvas for art and "decorating shoes."

Brandon Adams was generous enough to answer a couple quick questions between painting and dropping off shoes.

Your use of space in painting the sneakers is a mastery. Is it ever daunting to shift gears in scale when approaching shoes after painting on buildings?  Do you have a thought process or deliberate approach for making the smaller space work so well?

I try and think of the end result.  What's readable? From what angle can I have the shoes compliment each other from someone's point of view.  For example, If you see someone on the street you see the left outside and the right inside.  Are they repetitive? Were they designed in mind of each other? Are the panels on the shoes thought out? When you're looking down at your shoes, are they too loud? Are they palatable to look at everyday? Can you have a touch of flare without overwhelming the one who looks at them most?

Scale is relative to the space.  I take the same approach to the space regardless of size of footage.  If I'm doing a mural, then what will the photo look like where it lives online? Probably a small square at the end of the day but you design something that is easy to capture and share. Don't design something that is difficult for a supporter to share because there is no good way to see the whole picture. Be purposeful in design and message.

What inspired you to paint on shoes? Was there a particular ah-ha moment? Were you inspired by someone online or something you saw? Or was it an inevitable step in eventually painting on everything?

My first pair of shoes was for Sneaker Politics and the Mavs.  They had a show where Politics got to pick one artist. I was humbled when they asked me.  But they wanted more than a logo and color scheme.  They wanted a story.  They wanted a conversation starter. Thats why they picked me.  Im so thankful because it has opened so many doors for me and given me a new canvas and honestly revitalized my love for shoes. 

That's such a great story. We're glad they picked you too! It's a real honor and a pleasure to host your art in our shop and showcase and sell your sneakers and give folks that come through another chance to see your work.

You can follow Brandon Adams on Instagram and see more of his work on his website as well as at Dope Street Shoes located in the back of Everything Ellum at 2715 Main Street, Dallas, TX 75226.