LeBron 9 Freegum x ROM Gas Mask

Two custom treatments stack inside Freehand Profit's seventy-ninth mask, a reimagining of the LeBron 9 silhoutte. The piece is built from a single pair of Nike LeBron 9s that LA customizer ROM had already reworked in the “Freegum” colorway with dense black-and-white tribal pattern before Freehand Profit disassembled the pair and rebuilt them onto a gas-mask base, hand-painting the lens and filter canister himself to extend ROM’s pattern across the full mask surface. The resulting piece reads as a continuous composition from sneaker to canister, with the Nike swoosh, LeBron hex-shield, and red accent hits from the LeBron 9 architecture resolving across the face plate, straps, and breathing apparatus.

Gary Lockwood, known as Freehand Profit, is a Virginia-based artist whose practice transforms iconic sneakers into one-of-one sculptural masks. Since 2010, he has produced more than 200 unique works, each examining the intersection of identity, consumer culture, and contemporary symbolism through the language of footwear. By recontextualizing familiar materials into meticulously constructed objects, Freehand Profit elevates the everyday into something collectible—where craft, concept, and cultural reference converge.