Iris Bale, 99, proves it’s never too late in life to find your creative niche. Most days the great-grandmother retreats to her makeshift studio and blings up unwanted high heels, creating a dazzling shoe art collection in the garage of her home in Whangapāraoa. Video / NZ Herald
When Iris Bale was a schoolgirl art was a subject to be endured alongside the daily privations of life in wartime and nights in the backyard Anderson bomb shelter as Nazis rained terror from the skies.
But the 99-year-old has proved it’s never too late in life to find your creative niche.
Most days the great-grandmother retreats to her makeshift studio and blings - although she’s never heard of the word - unwanted high heels, creating a dazzling shoe art collection in the garage of her home in Whangaparāoa’s Arvida Peninsula Club.
“I was hopeless at art [in school]. The art master used to say to me, ‘You can’t even draw a marigold’.
Shoe artist Iris Bale with her favourite piece of high heel art: 'I like stripes', the nonagenarian says. Photo / Sylvie Whinray
She got the idea after seeing a picture in a magazine.
“I rang my daughter, and she said, ‘Well, go for it mum’. So mum went for it.”
Spread around her garage-turned-studio is an array of fabrics, paper, ribbons, glitter, bows and baubles, but there are no rules on what she’ll pick for each fresh heel - a style of shoe she’s chosen because of its visually strong profile.
“I’ve got to work out what material I’m going to use and how I’m going to use it. And it’s funny as you work on it, it takes on a life of its own. I know it sounds odd, but that’s what it does.
“Sometimes I go to bed thinking, ‘Should I do this, or that?’ But in the end they turn out all right, as you can see.”
Baubles, ribbons, bows, fabric, paper and glitter are among the items she uses to bling up unwanted high heels, Iris Bale says. Photo / Sylvie Whinray
Each heel - she’s switched from new designs for each one, because doing pairs the same was a waste of creative ideas - is done one at a time, and takes between a week and a month to complete.
Bale, who emigrated to New Zealand from the UK with her husband Viv and the two eldest of their four children after World War II, doesn’t know anyone else turning ditched heels into decorative art.
“Nobody’s mad enough.”
Iris Bale points to a particularly high heel - the kind used by pole dancers she says - that she has turned into shoe art. Photo / Sylvie Whinray
Few even know of her special interest, Bale said.
“I just do it quietly and I doubt if half a dozen people would know. I don’t talk about them. It just gives me satisfaction to know that I’ve done as good a job as I possibly can.”
Exactly how many times she’s done that she’s not sure - her collection might number 50, or more - with many already given away.
Finished pieces fill several tables in her garage, or have been gifted to fans.
Iris Bale has created more than 50 pieces of shoe art, using high heels, since taking up the creative hobby 9 years ago. Photo / Sylvie Whinray
The local vicar took home two recently, while Bale’s doctor told her she could put a pricetag on her heel art.
“I couldn’t sell them because so much of me has gone into each one. It would be like selling my soul.”
Cherie Howie is an Auckland-based reporter who joined the Herald in 2011. She has been a journalist for more than 20 years and specialises in general news and features.
