29-year-old artist Isabella Lalonde is not just a designer, but a world builder. Since founding her viral jewellery brand Beepy Bella in 2019, Lalonde has created her own universe of whimsical, ethereal pieces. Her jewellery has been worn on HBO Max’s Euphoria, and on celebrities such as SZA, Dua Lipa and Billie Eilish. These days, the artist is expanding beyond the beaded jewels she’s become known for, experimenting with not only apparel, but also broader creative projects. Earlier this year, for example, she teamed up with artist Maya Man to publish twentynine, a limited-edition zine powered by Lenovo and Intel’s Make Space platform. 

Make Space is Lenovo Yoga’s program championing creatives as they experiment and work with new technologies. The program recently introduced the Make Space Network, an AI-assisted tool that helps artists find the collaborators they didn’t know they were looking for. A few quick questions unlock a set of potential creative matches, with an open door to connect and start building something together.

Ahead of the tool’s launch, we chatted with Lalonde about her own creative practice, unlikely inspirations, and personal relationship with technology. 

Your jewellery design is obviously very popular, but this year, it looks like you’ve expanded your practice to other mediums. What’s exciting you the most right now?

Isabella Lalonde: So many things. Being in Paris, I'm definitely leaning towards clothing, learning how to sew, drape, and make garments. I've also been working with latex, so that’s super exciting. I'm going to be making new garments with mediums I've never worked with before, which is fun. I'm also working on knitwear right now for winter, and we have a few brand and artist collaborations that I’m doing through Instagram, which is great.

How did your love of art originate, and how has your identity as an artist evolved over time?

Isabella Lalonde: I mean, I’ve always been a freak, an outcast. I've always felt that my internal world was as rich, if not richer, than my external world. I think that literally is just the definition of why I always saw myself as an artist. Being in love with nature, magical things, and an Alice in Wonderland-esque, exploratory vision of the world – believing in fantasy, frequencies, miracles, and energy transfers. My work, I would say, is like a living, breathing organism, and it's a reflection of me. So as I grow, my work is also growing. It's similar to the act of consistently existing, because my work is not new, but it's not old. It's different, but it has the same DNA. So, I feel like it’s super self-reflective.

How would you describe your artistic style, and what have been the biggest influences on it?

Isabella Lalonde: Definitely fairytales and whimsical thinking, and colours. I love vibrancy. That’s a huge thing for me, especially with energy and living in a high-frequency state of mind. I often get inspired by eating fruits and exploring those senses, having the juices from the fruits flow into the colours that I’m using for my work…Building all different forms of sensations within all the senses we have, and mixing them in ways that you're not conventionally taught to think about them as humans within our society, is very exciting. So, feeling like a kind of wild and free woman in nature is probably the most important part of my philosophy of existing, and that just transfers to my work. 

It feels like no matter the medium you’re working in, your designs have a whimsical, fantasy-like feel to them. Where does your interest in all things fantastical come from, and how do you think about world-building in your practice?

Isabella Lalonde: This has always been me. I grew up in Switzerland, and I remember in our backyard, there were fresh strawberries growing, and we would take hikes in the Alps. That's where I found, at age five, my first giant red mushroom in the woods. It was bigger than the size of my head, and I ran to it on my own. Moments like that in nature have always really inspired the way that I think, even nowadays. Seeing the way that the moon would glisten on the snow and the fact that it would glitter from moonlight – that's so magical. To be able to experience that makes me feel connected to what living was probably like in the earliest times of humanity as a caveman, where you're kind of just one with nature. You probably weren't even thinking about it consciously; it just was. I think it's really sacred, important, and healthy for humans to remember that being alive is an exploratory and simultaneously insane experience at all times.

That kind of leads into my world-building... I’ve always loved people who create fake, imaginary worlds, like Tim Burton or Dr Seuss.  I thought, “I want to be like Willy Wonka with his chocolate factory.” So, that’s how I saw Beeby. It was like I was creating my own little happy universe, but one that has this element of critique in the harmony of it.

What are some different tensions that you wrestle with in your work?

Isabella Lalonde: I think one of the major ones is light versus darkness in energy, like edgy versus excited and youthful. Not naivete, but innocence. I think when I'm making my work, it’s almost as if I want you to have a psychedelic experience going into the world that I provide. So, I'm all about natural highs. A lot of things, like sensations like eating fruits, put me into a naturally high state. My brand and my art are a form of a high-frequency, naturally alternating space that people can hopefully find a little bit of healing within. 

In that vein, what are your most unexpected sources of inspiration?

Isabella Lalonde: Definitely sounds. I’m big into sound baths and healing frequencies. I’m kind of a crazy one with music, where I’ll find a set of sounds that feels like a whole new discovery, listen to them for two or three days, and then never listen to them again. I extract all the creative juice from the moment of what they’re making me feel, and then I don’t have use for them anymore. Also tastes, obviously. It’s within the senses, I think. And, I’m all over the place, but sci-fi movies, too. I also love handmade set design. That's something I geek out over. Any movie where the special effects are done by hand, I'm like, “This is the best art that I can see right now.”

I often get inspired by eating fruits and exploring those senses, having the juices from the fruits flow into the colours that I’m using for my work…

As an artist, what’s your relationship with technology like?

Isabella Lalonde: It’s pretty complicated, I would say. Technology is such an overarching term, because it can be anything from what you need to create a certain specific type of craft, like using Photoshop or Adobe programmes to animate things, something like welding technology, or things that I use for glass blowing, all the machinery and things like that. So, it’s been amazing. 

In terms of using a computer and a device, that’s something that’s always been my home, my portal into another world of imagination. Online is its own entire ecosystem, so I love nerding out about finding vacant, old websites on the internet that seem like they’re from 20 years ago. No one’s touched them, and the web design is crazy. Even for my website with Beeby Bella, I helped code all the pages and creatively directed every single click. I’m building a few art websites for myself right now that I haven't released yet, but they’re going to be whole digital worlds that you can go inside of, very esoteric and strange. I think technology and the internet are their own entire medium that can be manipulated in so many ways. 

What Lenovo Yoga Aura Edition features do you use most in your artistic process?

Isabella Lalonde: I like to use the touchscreen, and swivel feature. If I am on a train, perhaps from Paris to London or wherever in Europe, I can swivel the screen around and use the device like a digital sketchbook. That is so handy to have as an artist because it makes the process of working on the Lenovo Yoga feel tangible, and that allows me to make drawings more accurately.

How do you use AI to push your creativity forward, and what sort of role does it play in your practice?

Isabella Lalonde: I don’t use AI for any of my art, but I do use ChatGPT, and that’s super helpful. I would say the way I use AI is more manual than creative, which is also a huge part of learning a craft. For example, I’m working on a guided meditation album right now, and I’m teaching myself how to use programmes to produce things myself. That would never be something I could dream about learning how to do within the year without AI. So, I use AI in an informative way, which I think is how a lot of artists should be kind of excited to use it, because it’s super helpful with resources. 

How do you think AI could be used for creative collaboration?

Isabella Lalonde: Well, I think it can be really resourceful. You can find artist residencies, for example. In that way, you can find different places that will value your technique of what you're currently learning, instead of just shooting in the dark and having to Google things or relying on knowing industry people, which is an exclusionary activity anyway. So, I think it's opening up doors, just like social media did for us when it came out. Of course, everything has pros and cons, but social media opened up doors, and my whole brand happened because of social media. I think that with things like AI, it would be naive to underestimate the power of having doors opened for even more different types of creatives than what already exists. There are going to be whole other mediums that have to do with technology. 

What is a creative medium you want to explore but haven’t yet?

Isabella Lalonde: There are so many, but I’m currently learning ceramics, so that will be something in the future that I'll be trying out. On top of that, I’d love to practice coding. 3D modelling would be fun. But, I also want to start making some more live installations– my favourite area of focus in college was performance art. So, I think now, I want to start building some set designs and creating some interactive pieces of performance art that allow you to immerse yourself physically in the cities that I’m in.

What’s the weirdest ritual you have around making things?

Isabella Lalonde: I would say it’s definitely my sound element. I like to play different sound healing frequencies. I bought a heart chakra-opening flute recently. I also always just play with grounding myself throughout the process, because I like to make art from a place that is very calm, centred and meditative. 

What rules do you intentionally break around art?

Isabella Lalonde: I intentionally break the idea of comfort a lot. I like to learn the basic knowledge of a skillset, and me being innately rebellious and a kid at heart, I just want to play as soon as I learn enough. I never allow myself to get too comfortable, which honestly might change in the future. 

What is your current obsession?

Isabella Lalonde: Insects. I’ve been collecting some dried ones, and I want to learn how to do taxidermy.

What’s next for your work?

Isabella Lalonde: I think it’s a whole new chapter, and a whole new person behind the wheel. I’ve done a lot of amazing mental work, so, I think that's also something I'm really excited to bring: my philosophies of healing, happiness, and natural remedies into the world of Beeby, which I think it’s kind of already leaning towards, but making it even more accessible. Also, working with plants, studying plant medicine and just bringing a better, even more detailed approach to creating art and worlds than ever before.

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