For almost a year now, the Bulgarian internet has had a platform for Bulgarian illustration, which should bring together everything related to it in one place. The website “Bulgarian Illustration” began its work in March 2017. The idea is from illustrator Dr. Milena Radeva, who has been working for authors and publishers outside the country for many years. She graduated with a bachelor’s and master’s degree from the National Academy of Arts, majoring in “Book and Printed Graphics”, and in 2017 she defended her dissertation “Bulgarian Artistic Illustration from the Early 40s to the Late 80s of the 20th Century. Trends and Phenomena”. She is the author of various articles on the topic of illustration in Bulgaria and is an artist for nearly 100 children’s publications.
– Why did you decide to create a website for Bulgarian illustrators?
– It turned out that there is no platform on the Internet or in the printed media that monitors what is happening with Bulgarian illustration, and for a long time. And since writing my dissertation, I faced exactly this problem that I cannot find information about the years from the 90s to the present day – what Bulgarian illustrators are doing such as exhibitions, production, books, I decided that it would be easiest, instead of waiting for someone to make such a site or such a media, to make it myself and unite in one place what is happening at the moment.
– What information does the site provide?
– I started to form it by searching for news about Bulgarian illustrators and illustrated children's books. I mainly mean children's, because today only children's books have illustrations. The rest are mainly based on the cover. That's how I started with the events and gradually things developed to the current level – current information about the illustrators themselves, exhibitions, events, book presentations, readings, discussions, annotations for various books.
– How exactly do you work?
– I search for them and look for information. Mainly on the Internet or through acquaintances and friends. Something that Bulgarian artists and artists in general do not do is that no one sends their own messages to the media. And this is a very wrong approach, because if you do not introduce yourself to the audience, you cannot expect any media outlet, no matter what it is, to find you.
You can listen to the entire interview on the BNR website.
Add comment