Interview

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In his three decades at Nike, CEO and president Mark Parker has worked with a number of athletic and cultural gods, from Michael Jordan (Parker was heavily involved in the design of the Air Jordan) to Ken Kesey (whom he once consulted on the design of a wrestling shoe). He also collaborated with Lance Armstrong five years ago to create the now-iconic yellow LIVESTRONG wristband to raise cancer awareness after the cyclist’s bout with testicular cancer. This year, Parker has reteamed with Armstrong to spearhead a project called STAGES, a traveling art exhibition. Parker and Armstrong, both avid art fans, co-curated the show, recruiting more than 20 artists—among them, Richard Prince, Ed Ruscha, Aaron Young, Andreas Gursky, Raymond Pettibon, and Catherine Opie—to create original works, the sales of which will benefit the Lance Armstrong Foundation.

Unveiled during a one-week engagement at Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin in Paris in July, STAGES opens in New York in October. Artist Tom Sachs, who assembled a bike that includes a tequila bar for the show, recently met up with Parker to dis¬cuss the exhibition and talk about why, contrary to conventional high school wisdom, athletes and art¬ists really can be friends.

TOM SACHS: You have put together a group of artists for STAGES whose work you support and who, like athletes, are deeply committed to their craft, their obsession. Tell us about the connection between these artists and the athletes you work with.

MARK PARKER: I’m drawn to people who are obsessed, and I guess people who know me have described me that way—a little otaku. I’ve been fortu¬nate in my work at Nike, whether it’s through design or even the role I’m in now, to connect very closely with some of the top athletes in the world. Many of those athletes share that obsessive drive. I’ve seen it in Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods, and I see it in Lance. We actually worked out together down in Austin, Texas, where Lance lives. It was a challenge—I dialed it back a bit so he could keep up. [laughs] But it’s that incredible drive and almost single-minded¬ness that is really impressive. And obviously it doesn’t have to just be in sports. It’s in science and art and music and filmmaking—everywhere. That’s the con¬nection. I think the artists in the STAGES exhibition all share that passion for what they do.

SACHS: How did STAGES get off the ground?

PARKER: We were visiting with Lance in Austin last year after he announced he was returning to compet¬itive cycling and the Tour de France. Afew of us were hanging out at his house, kicking around ideas about what we could do to use Lance’s comeback to help in the fight against cancer. One of the things Lance and Ishare is an interest in art. We both commission art, collect art, and support creative people, so it was a very natural thing for us to land on the idea of combining sports and art in the interest of philanthropy.
SACHS: Why is it called STAGES?

PARKER: It refers to two things: the stages of cancer’s progression, and the 21 stages of the Tour de France.

SACHS: You’ve been with Nike for 30 years. You started as a product designer and have done a lot of different things on your way to becoming CEO. And yet you’re still a designer. In fact, you’re a bit notorious for always sketching while you’re in meetings.

PARKER: True, all true. I’m a relentless sketcher. It goes back to how you process the world around you—the whole left-brain, right-brain thing. Some people are data-driven. I’ve always been more visual. Generally speaking, Ithink designers are often undervalued and underappreciated. I guess you could argue that that’s okay because there is some merit to the idea that the best design is invisible design. At Nike specifically, we try to keep it simple. It’s impor¬tant to avoid any ancillary noise that doesn’t add to the design. Basically, get rid of the clutter—nothing gratuitous. I think overdesigning comes from a lack of editing. The strongest, most compelling, and most useful things in life are irreducible—love, truth, faith, honor. Some people want a product with a very overt aesthetic, and I think there’s a place for products all along that spectrum. But our company was founded on connecting with the athlete in a really deep way. One of the co-founders of Nike, Bill Bowerman, was this eccentric obsessive-inventor type. He was always looking for better ways to make equipment that helps the athletes perform at their highest level. Before I came to Nike I was already modifying my shoes to help me run better so it was natural for me to look at how I could make the shoes better from a purely utilitarian perspective, which is really what Bill Bowerman was doing.

SACHS: I heard that you once hung out with the writer Ken Kesey.

PARKER: Yeah. What a day. I was very young, just starting out, and one of my assignments was to go and spend a day with Ken at his place outside of Eugene, Oregon. Absolutely beautiful countryside. Kesey meets me at the airport and we drive to his place after stopping at Nancy’s Yogurt Factory, which his brother was running at the time. Everybody working there looked like they’d walked in off a commune. It was a very earthy, hippie crowd. It was great to spend a day with Ken. After I met his family, we walked back to the little shed where he wrote his books, and Ken pulled out some weed and we sat there and talked about a wrestling-shoe design for a few hours. He went on and on about what he thought we could do to make better wrestling shoes. Ken was a great wrestler in his college days at University of Oregon. Wrestling ran deep in the family. His son was a wrestler at the time, competing at the collegiate level, and they would wrestle together. Their living room floor was a wres¬tling mat. They’d just shove the furniture aside and go at it, father and son.