Decorazon Gallery Show a Shoe-In For Most Intriguing George W. Bush Welcome-Home

Decorazon Gallery in Bishop Arts has issued an international invitation to artists to submit works for an exhibition in February to be called "Farewell Shoes for Mr. Bush." According to the invitation, it's "a shoe art exhibition open to artists of all mediums and from around the globe, who will have an opportunity to express their feelings on a shoe or pair of shoes."

Hugo Garcia Urrutia, a co-proprietor of the gallery, assures Unfair Park that the invitation is politically neutral and that artists are not required to submit shoe-art necessarily critical of the soon-to-be-former president and Dallas resident. "They could send a shoe with flowers in it if they want," he says.

Urrutia's partner in the gallery is MK Semos, descendant of Dallas's well-known Semos political clan after whom schools and other monuments have been named. I was gratified to learn of this effort after receiving a great deal of harshly condemnatory e-mail complaining about a recent column of mine in which I suggested that heroic monuments will one day be erected to Muntader al-Zaidi, the Iraqi shoe-hurler. Some correspondents even expressed a wish that I might come to an untimely demise.

I think what the Decorazon shoe show demonstrates is that the flying shoe, whether you like it or not, has entered the permanent global lexicon of potent political symbols. Since the president has decided to make his permanent retirement home here among us, in our city, I wish one of the shoe works in this show could be incorporated into the city's official logo somehow. We'll talk.

Decorazon is at 417 North Bishop near Zang and Davis in Oak Cliff, across from Hattie's. The gallery is open Monday through Wednesday by appointment, Thursday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and 6 to 9 p.m., and Sunday from noon to 4 pm. The shoe show will open February 5. Right now Decorazon is showing three photographers, one of whom is from Dallas and has done a series based on the White Rock Lake "Lady of the Lake" myth.