Diego Lizán and María Moya: All that happens

07 Feb 2019

It has been a while since we did an interview in our blog, and it is time to fix that! To open the 2019 interview series, today we bring you Diego Lizán and María Moya, two illustrators who also have been subscribed to PRO Plan. María and Diego spent last year on an art residence that merges illustration, sculpture, and literature. We'll say no more, so you can find out more reading the interview. Enjoy!

Before talking about "Todo lo que sucede" (All that happens), let's talk a bit about you. Who are Diego Lizán and María Moya?

Diego Lizán: I'm a graphic designer, illustrator, and visual artist. My work flows from one discipline to the other. After working a lot of years on communication and graphic design, I'm focusing lately on illustration for children games and toys (with clientes like Djeco in France, or cartonLab), and on institutional communication. I love and have a great collection of toys and artoys; I'm very fond of ancient cultures and 50s-60s aesthetics. But my real passion is creating characters and imaginary worlds.

María Moya: I'm an illustrator focused on children books. Since 3 years ago, I've been also working on ceramics. Traditional techniques (materials and crafts) are my passion. In my illustrations you can always find a link with reality and nature, where I get inspiration from to create characters and environments. My worlds are full of tiny details which contain greats dosis of humor and tenderness.

"All that happens" has its origin on an art residence at Centro Puertas de Castilla Culture Center (Murcia). Could you tell us a bit more about the center, and how all this got started?

Puertas de Castilla Culture Center had a artist residence program where we took part in 2014 with other illustrators from our city (Murcia). The center, whose program is focused on comtemporary culture and art, and which regularly programs local and international artists, works, leaded by his director, to find new and different projects. We knew the center had a ceramic oven that was used in previous workshops, so we pitched project to them focused on character creation and moving from two to three dimensions. We called the project "Muñeco de Barro" (Mud Doll).

The process was all game and experimentation. We began trying to move the existing imaginarium from each of us to three dimensions, but as we progressed, everything transformed into the creation of a whole common world divided into 5 different landscapes. There was an expo with more than 200 pieces on Puertas de Castilla Center, which we called "All that happens between green and blue".

How was the experience and process of transforming illustration to a 3D ceramic sculpture?

In the early stages, experimentation and contact with materials made the pieces to have a strong, fresh improvisation ingredient, but as the project grew the pieces were more defined by the sketches. As the landscapes for our world took form, the characters were born right away on pencil and paper to live in one of these landscapes. We learnt and improved the ceramic techniques as we created more and more characters. We used different types of clay, porcelains, and enameling techniques.

What implies for the project "coming back" to the 2-dimensional world in book form, and having Grassa Toro join the project? What new challenges arose?

The book is the final piece that ends the residence project at Puertas de Castilla and took lots of hours of work, as we thought and designed it to be more of a book-object than just a plain book. We called Grassa Toro because of his extensive experience and publications related to design and illustration. He has worked with great creatives like Isidro Ferrer and Pep Carrió, who we deeply admire.

We had to do photography sessions almost as we were in a theater production, making them a way to illustrate this special book we designed. Grassa Toro wrote the "Fast and Visual Method of Initiation to Wonder" along the title "All that Happens". In this manual of sorts you can find four lessons: Reality, Metamorphosis, Wonder, and Beauty, each one of them with syllabus, questions, practical exercises, and recommended readings.

What did you discover and learn with this project and journey?

We were able to prove that, with passion, you can go very far in your journey. We discovered great professionals and people, who didn't hesitate to play with us. It was a huge project that we could develop from its very beginning. We are very glad with the process and outcomes.

And last, but not least: What can we expect from now on with "Todo lo que sucede" (All that Happens)?

"Todo lo que sucede", the book that we published from Puertas de Castilla on 2018, will continue its journey and we hope more people gets to know it. The expo "All that happens between green and blue" will be on La Cala de Choles, managed by Grassa Toro, until end of March. You can find more info at www.lacala.es

We already began to sell some pieces from the expo and we are working to launch sales again of our "Traveller", the cermic artoy that became the image of our project "Mud Doll". If you want to find more about it, you can visit www.muñecoebarro.com

Thanks, María and Diego!

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