About Vovo

Hello!

My name is Virginia, although everyone calls me Vovo.

 

My love for stories goes back to childhood. I was captivated by the worlds I discovered in books, comics and movies, and soon felt the need to tell stories of my own through drawing.

 

Deeply fascinated by character design, at the age of twelve I created my first universe: a galaxy inhabited by aliens, pirates and fantastical creatures.

Although I am self-taught, I have never stopped drawing. Art has become my refuge — a place where I can let dreams, memories and imagination flow freely.

 

Over the years, my artistic journey has evolved through exploration and experimentation. I went through a manga phase, then became interested in cartoon art, and during my third year at high school, I began independently developing a personal style: more naïve, with colour at its heart.

 

During lockdown, while attending CISA (Conservatorio Internazionale di Scienze Audiovisive) in Locarno, I created a dreamlike circus populated by characters associated with different colours and geometric shapes, each with a distinct identity. This imaginary world gradually became The Faustini Circus, one of my main illustration projects, where colour, shape and character come together to create a playful and slightly surreal visual universe.

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More recently, I have become fascinated by the Steampunk genre, with its machines, ticking clocks, impossible inventions and dreams of a future imagined by the past.

From this fascination, Mr. O’Clock slowly came to life.

His story begins in Paris in 1895, in the imagination of a young girl who has lost her father, a clockmaker. In the loneliness she leaves behind, she imagines someone who could have been beside her: a brother, a friend, a companion for all the adventures still waiting beyond her window. 

At first, he was simply a character I loved to draw. But, little by little, his world began to grow around him. One illustration called for another; new characters appeared, new places opened their doors, and what had started as a small story became a journey through time.

Mr. O’Clock wanders through a world that is changing almost as quickly as he is. The last years of the nineteenth century slowly become the twentieth, bringing new machines, new cities, new hopes and darker moments. History passes around him, sometimes quietly and sometimes with all its force, while his own story continues between the real and the imaginary.

Clocks are everywhere in his world. Perhaps because clocks measure time, while stories have the strange ability to escape it.

What began as a collection of illustrations is now slowly becoming a long illustrated book, growing page by page together with its characters. 

I create Mr. O’Clock’s world mainly with watercolour, pencil and wax pastel. I love the softness, little imperfections and unexpected traces left by traditional materials: they make every image feel slightly different, as if it carried a small memory of its own.

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Since 2025, I have also been an active member of Collettivo Illustrazione Ticino, a collective that brings together illustrators and creatives from the region.

 

Alongside illustration, I also create small sculptures in polymer clay, resin clocks and bookmarks — objects that accompany me in my ongoing search for new ideas and inspiration.