At last, the artist gets to sign!
For various reasons, mostly from other parts of our lives, Black Marigolds has taken much longer than expected to be completed. The final printing has now been done and, with the signing of the final signature completed [we do that rather than wait until the book is bound when we would have to approach artist and/or author with a lorry-load of books!] the whole lot can go off to the binder.
The binding is rather unusual and involves two printed items. First there is this piece of patterned paper
and then there is this piece of printing – in silver on black.
How these fit together will have to remain your guess . . . until the binders have done the work and I can photograph the finished book!
Very personal postscript –
The signing and the photography took place in Swansea this very afternoon. Glenys, superb artist and radiantly wonderful person, gave us a glorious tea and then settled down to the signing. Afterwards she let us see her latest work, a series of largish canvases of towering beauty – fascinatingly poised between land/sea and skyscape and abstraction. I cannot wait to see them together on the walls of a gallery . . . and I hope that at least one may end up on our walls!
Finally, I admitted something that I have sought to keep from all the rest of my friends – such is my dislike of ‘special days’.
“Glenys, as we leave I shall need a special hug and a bit of a blessing from you for tomorrow I am to be 70.”
Glenys who, despite the evidence of these two photographs, left that age behind an unimaginable amount of time ago, took me in her arms and said , “Oh, my little lad!”