In the entrance to Penn’s Arthur Ross Gallery is a work of art made with more than 350 shoes in concentric rings of color, creating the impression of a giant chrysanthemum, the center made of bright yellow pumps with black soles.

“With a Heart of Gold” is one of several pieces made of shoes in a new exhibit, “Willie Cole: On Site,” which will be on display through July 2. Also included are a “bouquet” of shoes, a “loveseat” of shoes, and a “painting” of shoes, which is made from a colorful confetti of spiked heels.

Used shoes, recycled water bottles, and wood planks are the main materials in the exhibit’s 19 art works, created by contemporary artist Willie Cole from 2006 to 2016. Hanging over the gallery is a 20-foot chandelier made of recycled water bottles that he constructed with students at the University of Maryland last year.

“I call it upcycling, because it’s almost like reincarnation for the objects,” says Cole, who lives in New Jersey. “They have been raised up from one class to another class in the world of art.”

Cole says he chose the materials based on “abundance, the things that are around us.”

“It’s like putting together a puzzle, but there is no picture on the box: You are going to make something but you don’t know what it is going to be,” he says.

Cole spent the day at Penn on April 7, first critiquing the work of Penn graduate students in the School of Design as an artist-in-residence, and then speaking at the exhibit’s opening reception, attended by more than 100 people.

Penn’s Vice Provost for Faculty Anita Allen says the exhibit is an example of the three pillars of President Amy Gutmann’s Penn Compact 2020: innovation, impact, inclusion.

“We have with us a very impactful artist whose work is beyond innovative and who himself represents the inclusiveness of American arts community,” Allen said at the artist’s talk. 

The process of bringing Cole’s work to Penn started more than three years ago with a conversation between Arthur Ross Gallery Director Lynn Marsden-Atlass and Dorit Yaron, the exhibit’s curator. Yaron is the deputy director of the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora at the University of Maryland, College Park, which organized the exhibit.

“It was a large canvas with iron scorches that first impressed me in the 1990s,” Marsden-Atlass says. “The minute Dorit told me what she was working on, I knew that I wanted to present Willie Cole’s work at the Arthur Ross Gallery.”

Cole’s earlier work focused on steam irons, inspired by one he found smashed in the street more than 30 years ago. The appliance is meant to allude to the African American experience, including domestic work by women of color. The Arthur Ross Gallery exhibit includes pieces with a repetitive pattern of black scorch marks made by hot irons on wood planks.

“I love the way Cole repurposes objects that in America we discard—water bottles, old shoes, old irons, wood—and that we consider impoverished in some way,” says Marsden-Atlass. “He takes it and gives it a whole new life and a whole new meaning.”

Marsden-Atlass and a donor Janet Ries Stern also teamed up to facilitate a partnership with ShoeBox Recycling. Exhibition visitors are asked to bring a pair of gently used shoes to “share soles” with others in need and to connect with communities and cultures around the world.