Following up on their earlier charitable projects like their “Foot The Bill” initiative and ComfyCush line, Vans is here with yet another laudable initiative to honor Black History Month. Showcasing four trailblazing creatives who are pushing culture forward and paving the way for generations to follow, the brand reiterates its commitment to uplifting the voices of marginalized communities and drawing awareness to the diverse representation of creativity brought to life.

Each week in February, Vans will feature a different artist delving into their story and work alongside the release of their Vans Custom design, reflecting their diverse styles and tenacious spirits. Each artist will be featured in store windows of all Vans stores across the U.S. and Canada for the entire month of February, as well as on Vans.com and Vans social media accounts. In addition, Vans pledged to donate $40,000 to the Black Arts Future Fund — a donation that will fund granting efforts to small and community-based Black arts organizations across the country.

One of the creatives featured in this collaboration is Tony Whlgn — a multidisciplinary visual artist born and raised on the eastside of Detroit, MI. After becoming an ‘Art School Dropout,’ Tony relocated to Brooklyn, NY to become a Junior Designer at Marc Ecko, he went on to do creative design for musicians and global fashion brands, including Kith NYC.

To honor the charitable launch, we spoke with Tony about Detroit’s skate culture, his unique talent of being able to channel his creativity in a multitude of ways and spreading the message of love to your community and the world at large. Read our full interview with the creative multi-hyphenate below:

VMAN What have you been up to in the past few weeks month? How are you keeping yourself busy these days?

TONY WHLGN I am a very involved person — creatively, entrepreneurial, just in general. But for the last few weeks, I’ve been doing a lot of mural painting, a lot of designing, a lot of community building, youth mentorship and real estate development classes — basically just using my resources in a lot of the ways that I’ve adapted my medium to. Making art, and then just really exploring new things to become a better version of myself after everything kind of cools down!

VMAN Speaking of being involved — how did you get yourself involved in this collaborative project with Vans?

TW Last year, I became an ambassador for North America and the Vans Custom Culture program. Essentially, the Custom Culture program is a program where we would work with students to help them customize a pair of Vans — they had a competition with other schools, and then one school ended up getting chosen — they picked the artists, and then they got the award and received the resources for it. After that, I was just steadily building up a relationship with Vans through communication and at the end of the day, just being real about who I am as a person. Establishing a sense of self with a lot of the Vans family really opened up this opportunity — they know my work, they know who I am as an artist and they know that I am working to promote education across the industry of design and creativity in general. I ended up just being a perfect fit and candidate for what they wanted to do this month.

VMAN What does Black History Month represent to you, in terms of this project and beyond? How do you feel it is different from any other month in the year?

TW I think for a company like Vans, it isn’t a sense of black guilt, to do a thing like this for the month because working with an artist like me or Sydney James, who is another artist that was on this project, you get not only the artists but also the platform that we established and worked on for ourselves to give back and work with our community and our culture. And then when Vans comes, that platform is allowed to be able to be expanded across a different audience.

Earlier today, I had a Vans panel where we were just able to discuss a lot of the issues that Black America faced and a lot of issues that just the society as a whole faced in this country with what’s been going on in recent weeks. It really just helps to give you a step into what the next thing will be. This isn’t the end of this for me at least, as an artist or creative or even an activist; this is just another stepping stone to be able to spread that message of intergenerational love, peace and happiness to other cultures and people through things that I’ll do in due time, just being able to have this platform and express it during the time of Black History celebration allows for that voice to be amplified.

VMAN What’s your story with Vans as a brand? Can you recall your first memory of wearing or interacting with their shoes in any other way?

TW I have always been into the fashion of things, at least the streetwear side of it. So when I was younger — don’t laugh at me! (smiles) — I wanted to learn how to skateboard, and the streets of Detroit isn’t the best place to learn how to skateboard, just because a lot of the sidewalks or even in the neighborhoods and there’s some potholes and cracks in the street that make it a little bit difficult on a learning scale. I think I’ve had these trials and tribulations with learning how to skate for that one year, but that channeled me into understanding the whole streetwear history (where Vans started), and the boys of Dogtown, and understanding that it’s a classic footwear essential. It’s not just a skater shoe.

I’m big on functionality and making sure that if I’m wearing anything, it has a purpose and it’s worn with intention. I remember in high school, being with my friends and being able to like, just surround the school computer to like serve websites and see what, what was the next cool-looking thing, and Vans happened to be some of that footwear. I knew I could see myself being in some of those, and then it all just bringing the whole outfit together.

I remember purchasing my first pair of Vans, tonal grays with a white sole. They were the Era’s, and I wore them to death — but it introduced me to different styles. I got into the Sk8-Hi’s, I got into some Slip-Ons. I actually thought I wasn’t going to be a fan of Slip-Ons but through the relationship with Vans, I was able to explore some other options and whatnot. They sent me some vulcanized Slip-Ons with a classic checker print on them and I was like, ‘Oh damn, these are kind of cool!’ (laughs) It helped, essentially, to tell the story that I wanted to tell with my clothes.

VMAN And you decided to put your design on a Slip-On, too — the upper was like a canvas for you to put your art on it.

TW Exactly. I chose the Slip-On just because when tasked with the project, I wanted to amplify the message of Black excellence and royalty, just having pride for self. I’ve seen the Slip-On looking like a pair of loafers with embroidery on the toebox, and I kind of wanted to mimic that in the design process while at the same time kind of just having fun with it, you know. Giving just enough and not too much of myself for this collaboration.

VMAN And kind of going off of that, what was your design process like here, with this collaboration? Was the choice of color black or the iconic checkered pattern significant in any way?

TW I feel like there is a lot of things that I have been pulled into interest-wise. Plants being one of them — as you can see a small fraction of it here (Tony has a nice little plant corner that I can see on my Zoom screen.) Really, the design process was like, ‘All right, how can I combine this fine art aesthetic with a commercial medium like footwear, where people would have to wear it every day?’ But not only that — people are able to customize that shoe with their own color, so what can I do to keep it simple but fun for people? You see the level of complexity; so whenever I’m doing a collaboration with somebody or working with somebody, I always try to find the root details of who they are and what they represent as a brand.

With Vans, it was going back again to that checkerboard, implementing that into the design process and being like, “All right, how can I give people some of my line of work that they love? I can give them some of that and not too much of it, and still spread the message and awareness of what it is that I wanted to promote. And then going totally with the checkerboard pattern with my sketch drawing kind of reminded me again of that loafer, and that dark suede that’s usually on a loafer. And then with that toebox design, making that the most intricate, eye-pulling piece of the actual shoe. Honestly, with working through and understanding that those are the elements that I wanted to use, everything else just kind of fell into place.

The customization on Vans is limited but honestly, if they were able to give me the resources that I know I could play with, I could get very imaginative with this entire process, you feel me? I asked them if I could do two different shoes, but it was limited to only one design. But I’m not cool, I’m being patient. (smiles)

VMAN Was this creative process any different from the kind of process that you’re used to from working on projects of your own?

TW Throughout my career, I got used to different creative processes and have been able to just adapt myself to those environments. At least with my brand, Tony WHLGN, I’ve dissected who I am as an artist and the creative into three different categories. It’s the mural arts & the fine arts with Toney, whereas Tony Whlgn handles a lot of the clerical design aesthetic side of things; and then Tone is just kind of like who I am as a person in self, really understanding that I have interests that are included in some of the passions or skills and talents that I’ve developed over time. So switching to something like design from mural painting is kind of second-nature.

Early in my career, when I used to like work at Ecko, I was told that I was different because I was able to draw and design, and that always struck me as kind of weird because I always felt that they all were one and the same — like if you could design, you could draw. But I guess in learning that a lot of people that do design can’t draw, and a lot of people that draw can’t design, that kind of helped me to understand that there’s a uniqueness about what it is that I do. I could design how the mural will look before I painted so that I can have a visual understanding of what I’m jumping into. And then when I hit that wall, it’s kind of like switching back into free-thinking mode; when I’m painting and creating, I’m kind of just lost in the moment.

Have you seen the movie Soul, where one of the main characters is playing the piano and gets lost in the moment? That’s how I feel with painting; when I paint, everything outside of me just kind of fades away and time really doesn’t exist there for me. It’s kind of a method of self-care that I’ve had to learn how to adapt into my career, and obviously make money off of it and things like that. But it’s really a fine line between being a business and then being an individual human being, and learning how to be vulnerable and express yourself with the outside world, growing that confidence and becoming more comfortable with these conversations.

VMAN How would you describe the graphic you put on the shoe’s toebox? What does it mean or represent to you personally?

TW I had a mentor who went to Parsons or Pratt, and I remember one of their art school mottos being ‘keep it simple, stupid.’ He would always tell me, whenever I got into expressing myself and over-diving in with the art side of myself, he was like, ‘Just learn how to edit yourself.’ And through that edit adaptation, I’ve learned to be simple yet direct with my messaging. So I took these interests of mine — plants, ancestral mass, the history — and combined them to really just broaden our [The Whlgn team’s] message of how we humans love to give and nurture.

So when you see that plant, know that plant is about love, and the message itself is about planting love. I can get even deeper about being able to walk and then root yourself, but it’s the intentional design and intentional creation. But when people see that message, I just want them to just plant love around them — whether it be a seed, a forest of trees, just spreading it. We get a better world just by deciding what we want to live in.

VMAN What was your favorite part about working on this collaborative project?

TW I think my favorite part was the panel. Just being able to sit on a panel with a sister of mine, Sydney James, who is from my side of town, and then another homie that is from another side of the country, and just express our views behind some things. And again, going back to that platform, spreading our message to a broader audience and really amplifying that voice was a huge deal. This is a project is very in-the-moment, but if we utilize this moment and transmit that energy into our next project, that it can become even bigger. Just being grateful for the opportunity that the platform is given, and then to have that reciprocated through the Vans community or company is something that is rare. A lot of companies don’t do that with their employees or the partners that they work with, and I thought it was interesting. I think that was the first time that I’ve been placed on a panel while being in the midst of a project at the same time. That was kind of cool.

VMAN What about the most difficult or challenging one?

TW Timeline… But I’m kind of used to that pressure, honestly. Having that design background and having deadlines and due dates further helped my artist side to evolve and find a balance in it. It’s like you gotta be creative and think of something that could work, and spread a message, and have intentionality, you know — that becomes the crunch of it all. But I kind of like built a career that’s constantly like that, with back-to-back ‘this needs attention, that needs attention’; I’ve learned to just decipher what the priorities are and, you know, get right down to it.

VMAN Do you see yourself participating in projects similar to this one, collaborating with brands to put your art on their products?

TW 100%, Um, I wouldn’t say that this is my first or last project; I’ve definitely been a part of a lot of projects that have been about building an expression of culture. I think this is a very significant platform because it does play into my history and upbringing with footwear and just me being able to relate to it in a realistic manner, as opposed to just some random company reaching out and being like, ‘You want to do this with us?’ You know, you’ve got to have a history with it to be able to really conceptualize things — like knowing the checkerboard pattern or waffle sole, those are the key elements of a Vans sneaker that you wouldn’t want to take away or change. But I definitely see myself adapting to more projects that are built around being able to express yourself through such a far-reaching medium.

VMAN What’s next for Tony WHLGN? Anything else that you’re working on or excited to work on in the near future?

TW Like I said earlier, with this whole pandemic thing, I got into a lot of things — real estate development being one of them. I’m currently sitting in the living room of a new house that my partner with a development team of friends to help remodel and build. Literally fresh new move; just being able to sit in this house, which is a two-family flat: upstairs I’ll be living and working, and then the lower half we’ll be utilizing as an Airbnb and a corporate rental. So if my corporate friends come from out of town and they need somewhere to stay that isn’t a hotel that, somewhere they could just get comfortable in and chill and be surrounded by some creativity, which will be curated through our company, The Whlgn. It’s exciting because this is just the first house, and I’m excited to see what this development project looks like over a community or a neighborhood. This is another way to add aesthetic to the messaging that my heart is spreading, even when I’m doing home decor and such.

VMAN If there was one thought or piece of advice that you could leave VMan readers with, what would it be?

TW Do what you love, love what you do. That’s my message.