Words by Offspring Community member Luke Jenkinson @kicks_and_kilos

It’s the year 2000 and the usually academically strong Luke finally gets permanently ‘kicked out’ of Year 9 art for once again being disruptive and not engaging.

I was sent to the Head of our year to explain myself. She questioned why in art I was troublesome when in all other classes I was a good student. My response was simple, “I just don’t get it”. By this point, I already knew that I enjoyed science, engineering, and human physiology/performance but art just didn’t make sense.

On reflection it was too subjective, I didn’t know what was good or bad but I did enjoy doodling my favourite trainers in my workbooks. Air Max 90, Air Max Metal and Air Max 97 were amongst the favourites. I grew up with contempt for art. I was dismissive of it, until 2012 when this all changed.

It was in 2012 trawling through online forums and blogs I became aware of the Tom Sachs Mars Yard 1.0. It was utilitarian, basic, yet somehow complex. The use of Vectran on the upper, a material used in the fabrication of parachutes for the Mars Excursion Rover. It was released alongside an art exhibition ‘Space Program: Mars’. It was like nothing I had ever seen before. Nike actually made Tom and his studio team a shoe rather than a designer collaborating with Nike to create a product, a subtle difference but an extremely important one. I had to know more and this was my first introduction to the work of Tom Sachs.

In the years between the Mars Yard 1.0 and the updated iteration in 2017, I realised Sachs had incorporated elements of science, engineering and human performance… my languages but this was also undoubtedly art.

I remember being in Soho on 29th July 2017, 2 days post-release of the 2.0. The first time I actually saw a pair of Mars Yards in the wild. I can picture the man to this day, no shoe had ever made me feel that way and I had loved a lot of shoes. I knew one day I would have them. This finally came true in 2020 with the help of fellow Offspring Community member Joel Brooks.

In 2019, my wife and I planned a trip to Japan. She asked, “Do you want to go when we can see the cherry blossoms?” and I answered, “I want to go when we can see the Tea Ceremony”. This was the first time I had seen Tom's work in the flesh and there was something that just clicked for me. It was truly the first time that I actually felt a real affinity for art.

In May 2020, I was invited to join a small group of Tom Sachs fans, Sachsian Syndicate. The members are from all over the world and some of these people are close to Tom and the studio team. We completed the Nikecraft ISRU and ‘weartester’ project together through the COVID lockdown, completing all 16 challenges. Unfortunately, I was not one of the 140 chosen in the initial phase 1 ‘weartester’ program to document the journey of the Mars Yard 2.5 sample, however, I was amongst the 82 people chosen for phase 2.

We joined weekly zoom calls with Tom and his studio to listen and discuss our place within the project as endurance artists, as ‘weartesters’, this wasn’t about the shoes, it was about our journey and our development. An unfortunate turn was that there were not enough UK9s so I chose to document the wear of the Nike x Sacai LDWaffle. Through these 16 challenges, we were invited to show our art at Tom's exhibition ‘Endurance’, held at The Rockefeller Centre.

With international travel restrictions still in place, we were zoomed in for the evening along with all the other international ‘weartesters’ and those in the US who were able to get there. Although some of us didn’t make it there in person, Barzin Akhavan and our fellow syndicate members did a great job including us in the event with some homemade photo heads – the kind you might find on a hen party of the groom.

A surreal experience, from the art adverse boy from Sheffield to having his work displayed in an exhibition in New York.

I’m really looking forward to the general-purpose shoe, Tom’s Mars Yard and overshoes have made sneaker history. The idea of an accessible and perennial shoe that is intended for all purposes is exciting. And the ‘archive’ iteration, a great wearable autumnal colourway.

Check out the OffspringHQ for info on the General Purpose release.