Inscription: A/P II/XIV

29, 30 and 31 are three of the series of five Moon Eggs. They mark the last of Paula’s long collaborations with Paul Coldwell, who is a distinguished sculptor as well as printmaker, and the last too with Paul’s wife Charlotte Hodes, a distinguished ceramicist and painter. It was time for all to move on professionally, but their friendship continued. The genesis of the story – a man laying eggs – came from Paula’s imagination not from a book, as we learn from the entertaining discussion about the story with Tom Rosenthal. Paula tells him that men (i.e. me) should learn what it feels like to lay eggs and when Tom asks what I feel about it, Paula replies “He loves it” (“and loves being in pictures”). Tom suggests Paula has created a hermaphrodite and raises the question as to whether the work can be considered feminist or whimsical. The discussion between the two is entertaining and instructive. Around this time Charlotte created some covers for my Menard Press, following Merlin James as designer. Like the Portuguese poet Alberto de Lacerda, Paul and Charlotte and others were friends of Paula whom coincidentally I already knew.