Bologna Book Fair

The Bologna Children's Book Fair was inspiring as it was two years ago! It was very much overwhelming. There were so many publishers from all over the world displaying thousands of wonderful picture books of all kinds. And there were so many illustrators with big portfolios and when they open them, I could peek their beautiful, strong, artworks.
But this time I found myself not just being overwhelmed but enjoying a lot more, knowing what to do!

The first thing we did after arriving the fair was to go to this year's Illustrator's Exhibition and find our amazing classmate, Zack Rock's artwork! Congratulations Zack for entering the exhibition!




This is our Cambridge School of Art stand, which was always nicely crowded thanks to all the visitors. Thank you so much Pam Smy, Marta Altés and other volunteer members for organising the stand!
It was so nice to see many people from our course especially from my year and to be able to catch up with them. We have Bologna Book Fair for the reason to get together even though we got separated in different part of the world after the course. We should really meet up in Bologna in every few years!



And the web gallery of our school's stand has just opened!

It was also great to know that Japanese illustrators were doing so well at the Bologna Book Fair. This year 16 people entered the Illustrator's Exhibition and Satoe Tone won the International Award for Illustration! Congratulations! The Japanese TALENTS exhibition was held in the city of Bologna during the book fair, which showed original artworks from picture books by 21 artists, including Taro Miura and Ayano Imai, who became famous after discovered at the Bologna Book Fair some years ago. And I can not remember how many Japanese illustrators I came across at the fair!

Now I am so motivated to work!!