I was always drawing or building things, or we would make some giant scarecrows for the fruit fields. I would carve those with a chainsaw”
Sometimes, del Toro’s characters develop in dreams and daydreams. “I end up staring at a wall for an hour or so and all these images and ideas pop into my head,” he says. He’s filled up sketchbooks with the ideas, but not all of them are feasible to create at the moment. “There’s really a lot more ambitious projects that I would like to get started on,” he says.
Born in England, del Toro eventually moved to Scotland. For a time, he lived in Edinburgh, where he was involved with what he describes as a “pagan theater group.” He adds, “We spent a lot of time making weird masks and chasing each other around the woods and things, so I think maybe that was an influence on making work in a sense.”
He also spent time in Fife, Scotland where he worked on a farm. Only a few years have passed since del Toro began sculpting, but creative pursuits have long been a part of his life. He says that, when he can’t make stuff, he might sculpt mashed potatoes or doodle on tables. “There’s always this creative urge that needs to get out,” he says. “That was the case even when he was farming. “I was always drawing or building things, or we would make some giant scarecrows for the fruit fields. I would carve those with a chainsaw,” he says. In addition to his artistic pursuits, del Toro works a full-time job, so he tends to create in the evenings or on the weekends. He’s self-taught and says that he’s still learning techniques, so his projects can come together quite slowly. “I work on things and then I spend a long time looking at things and considering things,” he says.
In one of his Instagram photos, del Toro is seen poking at a puffy, peachy-pink cheek of the five-foot face. He spends a lot of time doing this. He takes a lot of stabs at the wool until it no longer resembles the colorful clouds of fabric that are seen on the floor of the photo. Eventually, he says, it is transformed into a “tight knit of chaos.”
Felt, he says, has been fantastic to use in sculpting. “It’s really versatile and pretty forgiving,” he says. Del Toro dyes the wool himself, a task he says was much easier than he anticipated it to be. He layers the dyed wool and works them out with the felting needles, connecting pieces of wool together as he punches the material in various different directions. He likes to start off with long fibers and then bring in the shorter fibers later to create a smoother finish. Some people, he says, tell him that the surfaces resemble stone or ceramic.
The face isn’t for a specific show and del Toro figures that it will eventually hang on a wall in his home. “I had this vision of something that I wanted to make and I’ve been excitedly making it,” he says. “I’m very excited just to make it and having it done.”*
This article originally appeared in Hi-Fructose Issue 44, which is sold out. Get our latest issue, while supporting our arts coverage by subscribing to Hi-Fructose here.
