Carolina Panthers artist makes the magic for team’s ‘My Cause, My Cleats’ designs

It’s a Thursday afternoon, a few days before one his biggest annual deadlines of the year, and Ryan Bare is busy.

You can tell. Even over the phone.

You can hear the design tape popping and snipping. You can imagine the room he’s sitting in, one filled with bright-colored shoes brimming with purpose and personality. You can sense the thoughts running through Bare’s mind as the week approaches Sunday — the day Carolina Panthers players, like almost all players in the NFL, will don special cleats to highlight a certain off-field cause or issue that they hold close to their hearts as part of the league’s “My Cause, My Cleats” initiative.

“I’m scrambling,” Bare tells The Charlotte Observer, his attention admittedly divided as he simultaneously sands the pair of cleats long-snapper JJ Jansen will play in on Sunday against the New Orleans Saints.

You can almost sense Bare’s head shake and smile as he repeats himself: “I’m scrambling to say the least.”

Bare is an independent artist in Charlotte asked by his hometown team to prepare, design and paint the cleats most of the Panther players will wear this weekend. In so many words: He helps bring one of the most meaningful league-sponsored programs to life.

He painted the orange puzzle-pieced cleats of tight ends Tommy Tremble and Ian Thomas, who are wearing their shoes to promote awareness for Autism Charlotte. He painted Raheem Blackshear’s gold and gray and purple-accented cleats meant to promote awareness for the Elizabeth House Foundation and for brain cancer research more generally.

He did 20-plus others, too, a Panthers spokesperson said. (Some players have their own artists they prefer to paint their cleats.)

It’s a long but fruitful effort, Bare said.

“You gotta go in and prep each one of the pairs,” Bare said, speaking as he continues work on Jansen’s kicks. “Basically painting it like you would a car, removing any top coat from the factory, stuff like that.”

How Bare and the Carolina Panthers became partners

Bare, 42, became the Panthers’ go-to guy for being the “team painter,” so to speak, the first year the league introduced the “My Cause, My Cleats” initiative in 2016. The Charlotte native and Harding High graduate (class of 1999) did so by virtue of having preexisting good relationships with players on the team.

And how’d those relationships happen?

The quick story, as Bare tells it:

About 10 years ago, Bare got into the painting shoes game. Back then he was a service manager at a local car dealership whose eldest son, Jalen, had a passion for shoes and giving them flash. Bare helped his son start an Instagram page — @_sr_customs — and began offering the shoe services to friends and people he’d connect with online. It was a “hobby,” Bare said, less for the money and more for the fun.

One serendipitous day in 2014, Bare, a proud UNC Tar Heels fan, got the courage to Instagram message then-rookie safety out of North Carolina Tre Boston if he’d like to have special designs on his cleats this upcoming season. Boston responded. Boston wore Bare’s designs a bunch throughout his rookie year and the 2015 season, and it made an impression on a bunch of Boston’s teammates and drummed up more business for Bare.

It certainly helped that the 2015 season, too, was among the most successful in Panthers history. It was the year the Cam Newton-led team celebrated all the way to the franchise’s second Super Bowl appearance.

“We had five or six pairs in the Super Bowl,” Bare recalled. “We actually got to go to a game, so that was definitely an experience.”

When the “My Cause, My Cleats” initiative launched, Bare was called on again by the Panthers. The calls haven’t stopped. Being a shoe artist is Bare’s full-time job now, and Panthers players aren’t his only clientele. He’s designed cleats for the Saints’ Alvin Kamara before. He’s designed cleats for DJ Moore in Chicago, a product of his relationship with Moore in Carolina. He does non-football stuff, too. (He mentioned painting matching shoes for workers at a local salon on Thursday.)

The strangest part? All of this network has been cultivated with seemingly very little self-promotion. Bare doesn’t have a website outside of his Instagram.

In fact, when asked if he could submit a photo of himself for this story, preferably one of him working on a pair of cleats, he responded with a half chuckle: “I don’t have one of those.”

Being part of NFL initiative ‘a blessing’

What Bare does have, though, is talent. When Raheem Blackshear opened up the shoebox in his locker Wednesday to see his cleats transformed by Bare, Blackshear explained why the colors shined the way they did, why the logo was done the way it was — what the purpose behind this footwear flair was.

“This represents the colors for brain cancer research, actually,” Blackshear said, staring at the cleats with the shoe emblazoned with the name “Nate,” a victim of the disease from Blackshear’s hometown of Philadelphia.

“To do this for him,” Blackshear said of Nate, “it’s a blessing.”

Come Sunday at kickoff, when he sees all the kicks on the Superdome turf, Bare will consider being part of this initiative a blessing, too.

But it was Thursday when I called, so Bare had a lot of other things on his mind. Among them was probably all the sanding and taping and painting he had to do before Sunday — the day his shoes take the field, the day so much more comes to life.

‘My Cause, My Cleats’ Panthers initiatives

Here are some of the many ‘My Cause, My Cleats’ initiatives put on by Carolina Panthers players. This list was provided by the team.

▪ Johnny Hekker and Kamu Grugier-Hill – Hawaiian Relief – Lonomai Foundation

▪ Nick Thurman – Sickle Cell Anemia – Sickle Cell Disease Association of America

▪ Bradley Bozeman – Hunger Relief – The Bradley and Nikki Bozeman Foundation

▪ Miles Sanders – Financial Literacy/Youth – Sanders Dream Foundation

▪ Derrick Brown – Military Support – Derrick Brown Foundation

▪ Jeremy Chinn – Homelessness Awareness – Jeremy Chinn Foundation

▪ Adam Thielen – Youth Development – Thielen Foundation

▪ Shy Tuttle – Diabetes – Shy Tuttle Foundation

▪ DJ Chark – Youth and Mental Health – Chark Famioly Foundation

▪ Raheem Blackshear – Brain Cancer – Elizabeth House