Viva Brighton Issue #43 September 2016

LOCAL MAKER
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Focus on:
Iris De La Torre
Frida Kahlo golden heart and
eyebrows brooch
Acrylic, 6cm, £16
Tell me about the brooch. The starting point
for this brooch was Frida Kahlo’s face, and in
particular her eyebrows. My work is very graphic
and stylised, and I use a lot of geometric shapes
and symmetry. I like my collections to be cohesive,
to form a graphic language, and with Frida it was
obvious to me that her long eyebrows look like the
shape of a heart.
Frida Kahlo was known for her self-portraits -
did her work influence your style? I believe that
Frida Kahlo’s self-portraits were based on her own
experiences, in particular her personal pain. I admire
her strength and passion, for being a woman
of her own beliefs, outspoken, artistic and creative.
She was way ahead of her time in a very traditional
and Catholic 1930s Mexico. All of these elements
made me want to make a brooch as a tribute to her
and to my country.
I gather you first fell in love with plastic as a
child with your lilac jelly shoes - how did this
later translate into your jewellery design? I
loved the texture, the colour, the lustre, the flexibility,
even the smell. They smell like bubble gum!
I had the opportunity at university to use Perspex
and was encouraged to find alternative materials
rather than traditional precious metals to translate
my graphic and colourful vision. When I work
with synthetic materials, it reminds me of the love
that I had for those lilac shoes.
What’s your starting point when you sit down
to begin a new design? I was trained at Central
St Martins where I discovered I am an intuitive
and instinctive designer, rather than logical. I am
highly visual, and collect lots of images and objects
from which design ideas form and are developed.
I sketch a lot of different shapes until I find the
one that resonates with me. Once I am happy with
that I develop it on the computer, before making
models to see if it works.
What about composition and colours? I am
limited by the Perspex colour palette for my jewellery
designs, however it constitutes a broad range.
For the ‘Mexico in the UK’ collection I chose
strong, rich precious-metal colours such as gold
and pearlescent.
What technical difficulties are presented when
working in plastic? I have to rely on laser-cutters
and the standard and accuracy varies quite dramatically.
The gluing when layering Perspex can
be messy so I’ve learnt how to avoid marking the
material by masking each component piece, and
that can take a long time!
Julia Zaltzman
Iris will be at MADE Brighton, the Corn Exchange,
Fri 23rd-Sun 25th.
madebrighton.co.uk
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