From my research on the art of interviewing, I was able to conclude that behind every great magazine are great stories - namely interviews and features that grab the attention of readers around the world. Thus I started outreaching to potential interviewees who would be helping me to create a story to remember in my magazine.
My first choice of interviewees were Lela Smith, a fantasy photographer based in the USA and Flora and Lane, a fashion designing company also based in the USA.
Lela Smith is not only a fantasy photographer but she is an Art of Photography Featured Artist as well. I found her through TikTok and I was really intrigued by her works when I scrolled through her videos.
Flora and Lane is a shop started by Catherine that customises dresses inspired by real life and love stories. I came to know of them through TikTok and I was immediately captivated by their unique and creative dress designs so I wanted to interview them as well.
As I was really inspired by their works on TikTok and Instagram that I wanted them to be featured in my article. So I drafted two separate emails reaching out to them, requesting an interview. However this outreach was not successful as Lela Smith had declined my request as she was already working on a production of her own. And I was not able to get a response from Flora and Lane after emailing them multiple times and even direct messaging them on Instagram.
I was able to gather that reaching out to international artists and nailing down an interview would be tricky. So I decided to search for local cosplay artists and reach out to them requesting an interview. This seemed to be more plausible and efficient.
As I did not know of any cosplay artists from Colombo I decided to simply google it up to get an idea on where I should start. Although my search was vague I was able to get some helpful information. I got to know of Lanka Comic Con - the largest pop culture/geek convention in Sri Lanka.
Through their Instagram account I came across many cosplay artists, from which I selected a couple of them who intrigued me - Opula Fonseka, Hasara Romel, Gayani Kaushalya Perera, Aishwarya Tennekoon and Ashini Jayasinghe. I even messaged a fashion designer who worked with these cosplay artists; Nipunika Fernando. I couldn't read up on most of them before dropping a message as there weren't any information available.
But I came across a many articles on Aishwarya Tennekoon and the one that fascinated me the most was the article in The Sunday Times, Sri Lanka https://www.sundaytimes.lk/190901/magazine/bringing-onscreen-art-to-life-365583.html on how he brought on screen art to life. This article piqued my interest so much that I was determined to somehow land an interview with him and get to know more about him and his works. Thus, I texted him through his workshop’s Instagram account @tenaiworkshop and requested him for an interview.
Although I was not able to get replies from many of the artists I did get positive responses from Aishwarya and Opula agreeing to do the interview.
[Text messages with Aishwarya Tennekoon on Instagram. Phone number has been hidden to ensure his privacy is maintained.]
In the case of Opula, I was not able to get a reply from her when I asked how she preferred to do the interview, even after texting her multiple times. Hence I decided to move forward with interviewing Aishwarya.
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