Artist Pegge Hopper was browsing at a secondhand store when she came upon a pair of men’s classic wingtip shoes that reminded her of her father. She also saw a photograph of Barack Obama before he was elected president that spoke of the sense of style, restraint and elegance that would mark his tenure.

Those finds sparked a provocative “Art & Sole” show at Hopper’s Chinatown gallery featuring the work of nearly 30 artists who invite viewers to consider their relationship with this everyday wardrobe piece that for some becomes a compulsion.

A beautiful shoe can be considered the most sculptural of functional, three-dimensional pieces of art you can wear, representing fashion at its most creative and playful. That we’re hard-wired to appreciate footwear and what it can represent is evident in childhood when little girls and boys play dress-up by slipping their feet into their parents’ shoes.

Barbara Rau, one of the show’s organizers, gathered up her own and others’ shoes to sell at the end of the exhibition to benefit the nonprofit Chocolate on a Mission to make a point. “It’s very difficult to part with shoes because they’re markers of what we were doing at a moment in time, like sexy shoes for going out to nightclubs,” she said. “If you feel good in something and have memories of good times associated with it, it’s hard to give it up. You think you’re going to wear them again, then 30 years go by.”

Shoes were the subject of her first act of teen rebellion, when her mother tasked the 15-year-old Rau with doing her own shoe shopping. The instructions were simple: closed-shoes only and nothing red. Rau was defiant on both counts, returning home with a pair of red slingbacks.

Strangely enough, her mother wasn’t mad. “She looked at me and said, ‘You bought exactly what I told you not to buy, but those are really great.’”

Among artists whose works are featured in “Art & Sole” are Roy Venters, May Izumi, Jodi Endicott, A. Kimberlin Blackburn and Joey Chiarello, whose sculpture, “Walk a Mile,” is a Buddhist demon of paper clay whose imposing physique and gnarly teeth contrast with delicate floral porcelain pumps.

Gallery owner Hopper makes a statement about the current political climate with “Deportation …” a mixed-media work featuring an infant in Mexican sandals transported via wings. The show helped fuel Endicott’s return to art-making after the election left her drained. Her pair of bound shoes filled with the detritus of a woman’s life, from birth control pills to lipstick, representing a conceit of free choices, is titled “Women Contained.”

Bonhui Uy, an architectural designer, illustrator and artist, got carried away by the project, starting by creating two sheet-metal sculptures, followed by a series of collages. He said architects and shoe designers share the same task of creating a form with function. “Once it’s functional, I see if I can add an aesthetic that allows me to explore, to feel like this is something new that I can contribute.”