Best of Bologna: Edgiest Artists of the 2008 International Children's Book Fair

Original Exhibit: July 8 – October 8, 2009:
Deering Library, Third Floor
Permanent Exhibit: Completed October 2010:
Main Library, Fourth Floor

Alenka Sottler
Born: Ljubliana, Slovenia
Currently resides in: Ljubliana, Slovenia
Preferred Technique: Gouache

Published Titles
Tri pesnitev
Mala Odiseja
Domača naloga
Zimska romanca
LITERA Publishing House, Maribor, Slovenia

Personal Statement

The two illustrations accompany a narrative poem from the book “Tri pesnitev” (Three Poems) by the modernist poet Andrej Brvar. The poem “Domača naloga” (Homework) describes the escape of two elementary school pupils from class and their daylong carefree wandering. When they return home, their perfect day is shattered. The hero encounters his own feelings of anger and frustration towards the father's aggression.

Even at first glance, the density of the verse in “Homework” surprised me. The letters flowed like a waterfall across the pages of the book. This led me to the idea that the letters of each verse could be made into images. In this way, I would use the text as the starting point of the illustration and then build the entire created image upon the letters themselves. I had already been developing the idea of how to build a book with just one single element and this project gave me the opportunity to take a promising first step in this creative game.

To make the work more personal, I immersed myself in the time period described in the poem. This wasn’t too difficult as it was the time of my own childhood. This was the period of socialism in Slovenia when hardly anything could be purchased. My mother, employed by the largest newspaper “Delo”, brought home cuttings of used paper from the printing house. My father, a sculptor, would always sketch his plans on the printed articles due to the shortage of paper. The pleasure of drawing on already printed paper and of making something that before existed only in my subconscious allowed me to make the illustrations personal. I finished the work with the feeling that I was only at the beginning of new discoveries.