PG Talk: Corey Pane

Yea I'm a full-time artist, I play music and do other things in between too, but usually, I'm always doing some kind of form of art, whether it's photography, film, writing, painting, or playing music, I like to mix and up and try different creative forms. I went to school for art at UHart and I went to the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts in Hartford as a senior in high school. But I've kind of always just been self-taught, I like to learn things myself and figure them out from my many mistakes. I was never really into school or learning that way. But the Academy was a cool experience, I felt like that one year there would have been enough for me. But the most important thing I got out of any art schools was the people I met along the way, I met lots of other artists and creative people that I still work and collaborate with today. Yea I'm definitely a sports fan, I was always a big Atlanta Braves fan growing up, I loved playing baseball too. I played football too but continued with baseball longer. I was actually always a Steelers fan growing up too, Kordell Stewart used to be my favorite player. So it was funny I ended up meeting Antonio Brown and he ended up being on the Steelers. He saw some of my artwork online and asked me to paint a picture of him and his son, and we met up in Pittsburgh and just kind of became friends and kept working on projects ever since.

The craziest pair I ever did was probably for Ryan Shazier for the AFC Championship game against the Patriots. I painted portraits of all different Steelers legends I think there were 16 portraits in total and doing that many little portraits on a pair of cleats and trying to make them fit together and flow, definitely took a lot of time and concentration. But it paid off in the end because they looked really cool and had a positive inspirational message. The message and meaning behind things in any art is always the most important to me, I'm always trying to tell and story and I love symbolism. Are there any players that you really want make cleats for? I like to make cleats for players with a lot of personalities, that I can build off of and add to. Someone like Chad Ochocinco would be the perfect kind player I'm talking about. He is more of an eccentric character and has the kind of personality that would be fun to build off of. I think Marquette King, the Raiders punter seems like he has an interesting personality too, I would love to do a pair of cleats for him. But also anybody that has a cool message or meaning they are trying to get across with the cleats is what I would love to do too.

I think my style is a little different than most of the other guys I've seen doing cleats. I go at them with more of a painterly style and treat them pretty much the same way I would with any other painting since that's more of my background. I also do a lot of portraits which sets me apart from a lot of the other cleat designs I've seen. So the can allow me to make them more personal in a different way, for example, I had a pair that I did for Antonio where I painted all his kid's faces on them. And then we also did a lot of tributes to different people like when Jose Fernandez passed away, we were able to capture his likeness in a portrait and honoring him so soon after he passed allows it to give off a different more emotional feeling, That's what I'm all about.

After people started seeing what I was doing with the cleats, I've had some players from other sports reach out to me, and have done some cleats for other sports now too which is cool. Hopefully, it keeps expanding, I just like to kind of let it happen naturally, but doing art of some kind for boxing or hockey would be great, I don't think it always has to remain limited to the cleats or skates either. There are other things like maybe a hockey helmet or a wristband that I could paint too. I always like trying new things and pushing the boundaries and keeping it controversial. Doing some cleats for a more international star like Lionel Messi would be awesome because they would reach a lot more people and hopefully be able to inspire a lot more people throughout the world as well. My friend Ed always told me about his favorite soccer player named Zlatan Ibrahimovic and he has a really cool inspiring story, I would really love to work with him at some point too.