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News, Essays & Exhibition Blurb

Awarding Medals

Thu 5th Jul 2012

I have been away from my news desk playing. First making and then awarding medals to my children and a nephew for finishing their degrees and an art foundation course. I have had a lot of fun scrabbling around studio finding little bits and bobs to adorn the medal ribbons and finding and adapting postcards. Two of the recipients wear their medals with pride, the third is, I suspect, rather bemused by this gift from his mad aunt; "What's wrong with a normal congratulations card?" 

After quite a lot of indecision, general dragging of feet and a bit of bad temper the wording was finally completed on the childrens book. It has gone under the nose of a friendly editor and came back two lines shorter. Now hopefully the eighteen lines are perfect. With the images and the text together we have a complete manuscript. Then I started the paper management job as I checked and re-checked that the correct page was opposite its print partner so that when printed, cut and slotted together, all pages are printed on the right side of the paper and the correct way round. I don't think I will completely believe I've got it right till I take it off the press and make up the first copy.

All of the text and all the images have now been transferred onto the four large stones and are resting under a thin layer of gum arabic. Due to the nature of the drawings and the text a very softly, softly approach is needed to establish them on the stones. We are probably a couple of weeks off rolling-up with non drying ink and seeing if I have something sufficiently secure on the stone to proceed. If not it's back to the grinding room and try again. I am both very excited and trepidaceous. I jokingly told someone I was going for a Christmas book launch, I hope I was not being too optimistic.