The Felted Faces of Paolo del Toro
The face that Paolo del Toro has been sculpting for months isn’t particularly heavy. It’s mostly hollow and covered in wool felt. But, when that face fell on the artist recently, he recalls, it sure felt that way. “It certainly knocked me to the ground,” says del Toro by phone, “but it’s really easy to lift.”
The face is massive—about five feet tall by del Toro’s estimates—and its features are pronounced. Its eyes bulge. Its nose juts out prominently. He says that he spent a lot of time trying to get that nose right and that helped him figure out the rest of the face. “People are often focused on the mouth or the eyes,” he says, “but they are often a bit secondary.”
The mouth gapes into an uncomfortable shape, almost as if it has eaten something with a terrible taste. To sculpt the mouth, del Toro had his wife model so that he could understand some of the details of the feature better. Two distinct lines run down the patch of felt skin that lies between the nose and the lips. When you look between the face’s large set of teeth, you’ll see that the mouth isn’t empty. There’s a toad in that hole.
Del Toro, who is based in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, has been working on the project since the beginning of 2017. At the time of this interview, in mid-May, he was still at work on it, but he has shared progress photos via his social media channels. The face is set to become a spectacle, one with influences ranging from Greek sculpture and depictions of the Virgin Mary to the books he enjoys reading on topics like the occult and gnosticism. “I was influenced by these normal, mainstream ideas in terms of the sculpture and what it’s trying to say is maybe a subverted version of that,” he says.
“The idea of it really is that it’s this face with life and death going on in this microcosm,” del Toro continues. “She’s wearing this crown of flowers and leaves and there are bugs eating into the leaves and hatching out and feeding on flowers and then bugs, moths, around her face and then eventually they gravitate towards her mouth where they are consumed by the toad.”
Del Toro has been quickly gaining recognition for his large, felt sculptures of faces that come alive with exaggerated features caught in active poses. Eyes bug, tongues wag and teeth clench in works that recall old masks and Punch & Judy puppets. So far, del Toro has only participated in two gallery shows. He made his gallery debut in June of 2016 at a show that was organized by a friend. It took a year of preparation and a bit of pressure—del Toro says that he didn’t want to “embarrass” himself—to create the work for the show. “I just really threw myself into it and the sculptures got progressively bigger and weirder and more colorful,” he says. Some of the works from that show moved on to The Shape of Things to Come at Jonathan LeVine in New York early in 2017.
I couldn’t keep doing woodwork because it’s too expensive and messy and I don’t really have any room to make large, wood sculptures or materials or tools or anything like that.”
Meanwhile, his art has grown in popularity thanks to social media sites like Instagram and Tumblr. He admits not being much of a social networker, but del Toro is still pleased with this development. “I feel like this is the first time that I was really making art just for me,” he says, adding that, in the past, he tried to make work specifically to sell. Now, though, his primary concern is following his own vision of how the art should look. “I feel like once I started doing that, people started responding much differently,” he says. “I think that things really took off now that I was happier as an artist and people liked what I was doing more.”
About six years ago, del Toro was a farmer in the French Pyrenees. It was there that he met his wife, which ultimately led to the start of his sculpting pursuits. “She dragged me kicking and screaming back into civilization,” del Toro says. The two traveled together throughout Europe and in the U.S. and, during that time, del Toro began sculpting small wood pieces. “I had to make something that was light and hollow,” he says. He didn’t have tools, so he made his own. “It was always rudimentary,” he says. Three years ago, the couple settled in the U.S. and del Toro started working on bigger pieces. That’s when he began experimenting with felt. “I couldn’t keep doing woodwork because it’s too expensive and messy and I don’t really have any room to make large, wood sculptures or materials or tools or anything like that,” he says.
Del Toro wanted to make larger pieces, but he wasn’t expecting them to swell into the huge felt faces that he’s becoming better known for creating. He estimates that his first sculpture was about five times larger than a human head, but says that he hadn’t noticed that grand scale until his wife walked passed the piece. “I think that when you’re so focused on a project, that’s the whole world, so you don’t really see or think of anything outside it,” he explains. “So it was hard for me to get the scale of things. His next project was intended to be about the same size as the first piece, but it grew larger too. “That kind of keeps happening, but I really love that,” he says. “I really like working on a large scale, so that’s where they came from to an extent.”
Initially, del Toro made his pieces entirely from wool, but as they swelled, he needed to build cardboard skeletons for them. He also uses expanding foam to build a base. “Then it’s just hours and hours of stabbing with the needle—felting needles—to build up this surface wall,” he says. “It’s kind of mind-numbing stuff, but I like it.”
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.
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