Programata

We find him on the beach in Sinemoretz, but otherwise he is more of a mountain person - he often climbs Vitosha either with his bicycle and friends, or with his camera to seek peace and a new perspective. That's when he and his girlfriend are not flying to a new big European city as they often like to do.

She has been living in Sofia for four years, but she is an Italian born in Rome so when we call her on the phone, she answers in Bulgarian, Italian and English in one sentence. Valentina speaks not only between languages, but also between several areas of work that we have seen around in various projects like her land-art path in Strupanitsa. When we meet her, she has just moved large pieces of granite around in preparation for Sofia Art Week (more about the festival here), where she’ll be making an installation with a video on the vitrine of Structura gallery. Before we see it, we meet with Valentina to ask is it not heavy to work with stones, what is so nice about Sofia blocks and why she’s got books on agriculture in her library.

If you are from Varna, you may know her artistic style from the visuals for the VarnaLit festival. And you may know Katrin, too - she grew up by the sea where she made her first steps as a painter and then tried her hand at graphic desing, poster art and in  drawing jazz musicians while they were playing at her favorite Menthol club.

In short, let's say she's a master of fine arts, specializing in Graphics. However, after just one look at her works here, you'll surely want to know more about the person who draws that way. So here we go:

She loves new places with interesting culture, strives to live minimalistically with care for the nature and every time makes different pancakes. As if in previous life, she studied Hungarian philology, translated, edited, and traveled a little bit more before she made a sharp career turn and became a graphic designer and illustrator.

While you're reading this, the works of Todor are simultaneously participating in two exhibitions: a group one focused on typography in the Sofia Univesity rectorate and a solo one in the UniArt gallery, where the Cyrillic alphabet speaks in different formats - from a bent street sign to echoing sound.

When it comes to making big decisions, she often follows her intuition instead of weighing out her options for months and months. That's how she knew her place was at the National Art Academy (where she was a student of Andrey Daniel), ever since as a little girl she first saw the beautiful red building on Shipka Str. In the same way she found herself at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna: "I went to a very old, wonderful elevator that led to the Graphics studio, and I knew - here is where I want to be."

She's a summer person and she's always in search - of her next destination; of the next great moment to be caught on her analog camera; of another neighbor's pot from which to steal a flower; and of the next part of herself which to start developing.

She does not like hurrying in the morning, but she still misses the most dynamic episode of her life - when she was a dancer. She stopped competing in that field when she decides to study at the Art Academy, and this soon brought her another valuable bowl - the painting award Edmond Demirdjian in 2015 (shared with her sister Eleonora).

What happen when you mix the genes of a ceramics artist (Burya Stefanova) and a sculptor (Lyubo Prahov)? The answer is Velika - a multi-talented artist who inherited her parents' sense of space and form and put it to use in many different ways.

Yael is on instagram.com/y.taig, behance.net/yaeltaig0365 Her exhibition at Credo Box is open between April 6th and May 7th

She loves the mountain, bread with honey and a white cat with different eyes. Since she was a kid, she's been in the right environment - she grew up with the illustrators Mila Yaneva and Andrea Popyordanova (the latter is her sister). "Maybe I've always followed somehow subconsciously her taste, interests, ideas, and directions so at some point I found myself on the same path as her." Thus, Sofia first enrolled in an art high school where she was "very colorful and then very gray" while studying the purity and grace with which later she was twice accepted at the National Art Academy.

If you find yourself in the mountains with him, don't worry if bended over a flower or a beetle he tells you, "I'm staying here, you go ahead, I'll catch up with you somewhere." This is Lyuben's natural environment while working on his scientific illustrations, each of which takes hours of exploration, shooting and searching. This focus on detail is also found in his profession - he is a curator at the Sofia City Art Gallery and art historian, enchanted by the old art. You will often see his name in an article, a catalog or a congress, and the Society of Scientific Illustrators (to which he is a member) has exhibited his fine and detailed drawings in three exhibitions. Well, tighten your backpack - Lyuben leads us on a tour for his important moments.

Nature is a companion whom he can talk to for a long time, and he loves to turn its particles into herbariums - like those you can currently get from Twisted Mannequin. Otherwise he is inspired by the city as a clear mirror of today's society, he reads a lot of poetry, which is "the purest form of literature," and it is important for him to take pictures because they are a visual language, "and we live in a visual age."