I was always drawing or building something, or we would make some giant scarecrows for the orchard. I’d carve those with a chainsaw.”
At times, del Toro’s characters develop in dreams and daydreams. “I would end up staring at the wall for an hour or so, and all these images and ideas would come to my mind,” he said. He fills his sketchbook with these ideas, but not all of them are currently feasible. “I do have a lot of more ambitious projects that I want to start,” he said.
Del Toro was born in England and eventually moved to Scotland. For a time he lived in Edinburgh, where he was involved in what he called a “pagan theater group”. He added, “We spent a lot of time making weird masks and chasing each other through the woods and other places, so I think that probably influenced the creation in some way.”
He also worked on a farm in Fife, Scotland. Del Toro has only been sculpting for a few years, but the pursuit of creativity has long been a part of his life. When he can’t make something, he says, he might be carving mashed potatoes or doodling on the table. “There’s always this creative impulse that needs an outlet,” he said. “Even when he was farming. “I was always drawing or building something, or we’d make some giant scarecrow for the orchard. “I would use a chainsaw to carve them,” he said. In addition to his artistic pursuits, Del Toro works a full-time job, so he tends to create in the evenings or on weekends. He is self-taught and says he is still learning the technology so his projects can be completed fairly slowly. “I do something and then I spend a long time observing and thinking about things,” he said.
In one of his Instagram photos, Del Toro can be seen poking at the puffy, peachy-pink cheeks of his five-foot-tall face. He spent a lot of time doing this. He gave the wool multiple stabs until it no longer resembled the cloud of colorful fabric seen on the floor in the photo. Eventually, he said, it became “a tight mess.”
Felt, he says, is great for sculpting. “It’s really versatile and very forgiving,” he said. Del Toro dyed the wool himself, a task he said was much easier than he expected. He layers dyed wool and works them with felting needles, joining the pieces of wool together as he stamps the material from different directions. He likes to start with long fibers and then add shorter fibers to create a smoother surface. He said some people told him the surfaces resembled stone or ceramics.
The face was not designed for a specific show, and del Toro expects it to end up on the wall of his home. “I had this vision of what I wanted to do and I was always excited to do it,” he said. “I’m just happy to be able to get it done and be done with it.”*
This article originally appeared in High Fructose Issue 44, which is now sold out. Subscribe to High Fructose here to get our latest issue and support our arts coverage.
