11.2 - Contributors

Summer 2003 (11.2)

Contributors

As the youngest of four children, Zarifa Salahova always had to wait until her older brothers finished reading books before they passed them down to her. Maybe that's why she valued them so much and ended up decades later creating the first privately owned library in the world featuring 3600 miniature books. It's a credit to her ingenuity and love for great works of literature and art that she has found miniatures in many languages all over the world. Bring her some of your favorite miniature books to add to her collection and she'll exchange them for those she herself has published that relate to Azerbaijan. Page 43.

Without a doubt, we could not have published this issue of Azerbaijan International without the tremendous support from our Baku Manager, Arzu Aghayeva. Bright, talented,extremely reliable, gifted in languages, as well as being highly computer literate, Arzu coordinated the contacts not only for much of the commercial contacts that have made this issue possible, but she directed and guided our Baku staff to gather much of the editorial and photographic research for this issue as well.

Visiting Yavar Sultanov in his Studio in the Loft on Istiglaliyyat Street across from Baksovet Metro in February this year gave us the idea to do a special magazine issue entitled "Best Kept Secrets". Yavar graciously coordinated visits and gathered information from five other superb artists in the Loft where more than 20 artists also make their studios. An incredibly talented artist himself, see pages 38-39, it seems architectural elements invariably end up in his works. His sketch of the Artists Loft on page 21 provided the basis for our graphics design so that art loverrs could easily find their way and get to meet these artists.

Ulviyya Mammadova has provided a great deal of the backbone for this special Summer 2003 edition. Persistent, hard working, dedicated, genuine, and detail-oriented, she helped us collect the hundreds of pieces of information that make up our Directories - Business as well as Embassy, pages 86-97, that you'll find in the back of the magazine. She coordinated the articles related to the six artists in the Loft, pages 18-39. Also, she researched the feature about Baku's Miniature Book Museum. Page 43.

Budding artist, Sabina Aliyeva, was eight years old when she painted the brilliant-colored scene on our back cover for a poster project entitled, "Save the Nature, Save the Culture", sponsored by Unocal. Sabina, now 10, continues studying art with Galina Nikolayevna Churilov, and she has already won various prizes for her art. Sabina loves to travel with her family to different parts of Azerbaijan and, you guessed it, she loves drawing! She's the youngest person we've ever featured as an artist in our magazine. Visit AZgallery.org to see more of her works, or 3,000 other works by more than 160 artists. See Back Cover.