Yesterday, The Big Ten Network featured Penn State alumna Kelsey Amy, also known as the 2012 Big Ten Offensive Player of the Year in field hockey at Penn State, in its Alumni Spotlight. The interview can be viewed below:

Amy said that being a student-athlete at Penn State was no easy task, especially after tacking a Fine Arts major onto her already busy schedule. But that didn’t stop her — she went on to graduate from Penn State in 2012 with a B.F.A. Degree in Fine Art, specifically in drawing and painting.

“I went to school and studied to actually be a hyper-realism painter, which if anyone knows what that even is, it’s painting paintings with brushes that have like two bristles in them,” Amy explained in the video.

The rest of the video chronicles her pursue in a fine art career. After graduation, she moved to Portland, Oregon to chase her dream of working for Nike. Though she was in a new city, Amy said that this has been a long-term hobby for her, which all began in ninth grade in her small hometown, where she couldn’t stand the idea of having the same lame shoes as everyone else. So, she took matters into her own hands, or feet rather. Her livelihood of shoe design really took off after posting pictures of her sweet shoes to multiple social media sites, where Amy received a plethora of positive feedback from her peers.

“People would contact me and they would end up buying shoes, which I thought was just the craziest thing of all time that people were coming to me and asking me to create one of a kind shoes for them,” Amy said.

Amy said that a lot goes into each pair and that she doesn’t just “slap some paint on and draw a couple lines and then [they’re] good to go.” She has to be mindful not only of what her customers want, but also of the actual physical dynamics of the shoes. She explains that blue-prints, so to speak, are hard because the shoes aren’t flat, making it difficult to draw straight lines.

She sets high standards for her work and vows to never send out a pair of shoes to a customer that she herself would not wear on her own feet. In fact, she goes to such an extent to make sure each shoe is perfect — sometimes mixing paints for hours just to get the correct hue. Amy also revels in the fact that she uses much of the information she learned in her classes at Penn State while creating these works of art for her customers.

If you’re interested in a pair of these beauties, you can join the three-month backorder list at her website.

Photo: Sprite P.O.U.R.