This episode of Inform & Connect features Clarke Reynolds, a UK-based visual artist who uses sound and touch to bring his art to life for people who are blind or visually impaired.
Clarke knew from a young age that his calling was to be an artist. At age four, he started losing sight in his right eye, and hospital treatments did little to help. He turned to art – a solitary hobby that became his passion. He earned a diploma in art and design, as well as a BA honors degree in model-making, and created art as much as he could while working as a dental model-maker.
At the age of 33, Clarke started to lose sight in his left eye due to retinitis pigmentosa. He adjusted his approach to creating art, opting for a more tactile approach that would also be welcoming for audiences who are blind or low vision. Since then, Clarke has had two residencies at UK-based art galleries and has given a talk at the Royal Academy of Art in London.
The conversation centers around Clarke’s journey of sight loss, his passion for art, and how that passion has brought healing and the power of adapting through difficult times.
“My art has changed a lot as my vision decreased, but one thing has always stayed the same: the use of dots in my work,” Clarke says. “Now the dots mean something, as I've discovered Braille.”
Transcript
Melody Goodspeed: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the American Foundation for the Blind Podcast. We're so excited to have you here as always, and we have a fun guest today. We were just chatting prior, and the word magical just keeps coming up, and I'm so excited about it. We have with us our fabulous Clarke Reynolds. Now, Clarke is in the UK and is a blind artist. I just enjoy our conversation. So, Clarke, thank you so much for being here.
Clarke Reynolds: No, my pleasure. I say my friends across the States have been so welcome to what I do. My sight loss struggles have been made so much easier by the amount of happiness I get from talking to you.
Melody Goodspeed: Oh, I love it so much, and you are so happy. Well, I want everybody to hear just about how fabulous your art is, and I've been dying to ask you this question all day. I'm never ever going to be able to open up another question like this. Let's talk about your braille suit. Oh, that was fun.
Clarke Reynolds: Well, yes. Like I say, I'm a blind artist, but I'm known now as the Blind Braille Artist.
Melody Goodspeed: Ooh.
Clarke Reynolds: Literally, a month ago, a couple of my friends, who are quite influential, they said, "What would you like to do?" I said, "I've always wanted to do a Braille Trail." They said, "Oh, we can make that happen." They made it happen at a music festival called Victorious. Can you imagine 50,000 people just going there for music? I thought, "What would be great to highlight a Braille Trail? A braille suit." So I made a braille suit literally. Black and yellow's my thing. It's a great color for the sight-impaired, so my suit is literally the brightest yellow you can get. Then my partner ironed on the letters, the ones you buy from any shop. Then I got some Velcro dots and stuck them on, so they're tactile. Literally, my suit is a tactile... I'm living art, my living braille art suit.
Melody Goodspeed: I love it. I absolutely love it. You said Victorious was the music show you went to?
Clarke Reynolds: Yeah, yeah. So it was a…
Melody Goodspeed: You are literally the victorious on the victorious braille walk, man.
Clarke Reynolds: Yeah, yeah, literally. It was great because lots of kids there because they had a kids thing, and that's where I was based mostly because it was ideal was giving out the map to the Braille Trail, which went right around the festival. It was words, but each letter... It's better for tourists. You find a fee, but the words about it were inspiration words, so V for vision, I…
Melody Goodspeed: Wow.
Clarke Reynolds: ... for inclusion, and T for tenacious, and it was in my color-coded braille. People could decode it from my key, but blind people can go up and physically touch it. Oh my God. I met the most amazing girl. So 50,000 people. I was having discussion with someone, and her dad turned around and said, "Can my daughter touch your suit?" And I said, "Of course." She was about five years old. I got on my knees, and we were just chatting.
The dad asked the girl. The name was Etta, and she said, "Etta, why do you want to touch this man's suit?" And she turned around and said, "Because I'm blind." Oh, and we just had the amazing conversation. She felt my suit. She was just learning braille. She talked. She wanted to know about my stick, and then we chatted about the trail that was meant for people like her to experience something in the visual world. She made the festival. No matter how many people I talked to that day, she made it for me.
Melody Goodspeed:
Oh, Clarke, that's awesome. I love your energy, and you're like, "I want to do this. We're doing this," and you created this magical experience. That is awesome. That is so great. Oh, I love that story. Thank you so much for sharing. It…
Clarke Reynolds: It was great. As a blind adult, our worlds don't collide, do we? We don't collide with very young blind children. She was the youngest blind child I've met, and I want to do more of that because I want to be a role model for not just the blind child, but for the parents to show them that they don't have to put their anxiety onto their children, "Oh my God. My child's blind. What can be done?" There's so many inspirational people out there, and there's not enough model, so I want to be a role model for that young generation growing up saying, "No matter what their dreams are, they can live that dream."
Melody Goodspeed: Yes. Well, I can say that you're a role model for anybody. Just even with that story right there, I think it teaches all of us that we need to find what we need to do and be role models for everyone, so I love that so much. And that little girl... That is going to be the best highlight, and I'm sure she's going to take over the world with goodness.
Clarke Reynolds: Exactly. Yeah. I mean I met her again on the second day, and I met her mom and her sister as well, and I've given her one of my... Her dad's going to pick up one of my art pieces that I created a couple years ago where I used fluffy fabric and I spelled the word stroke, so you physically have to stroke the piece, and it reads out stroke. She's going to have that in her room.
Melody Goodspeed: Oh, nice. I love it. Well, I want to go back to a couple things. When you talked about your color theory in these drops, I want people to understand what that means. Can we go back just a little bit and talk about little bit on your sight loss journey and how you came to where you are now, and your color theory, and how you match it with braille, and what your art is all about?
Clarke Reynolds: Yeah.
Melody Goodspeed: Thank you so much.
Clarke Reynolds: That's okay. For me, I always wanted to be an artist from the age of six. Blind in one eye from the age of six. Didn't bother me. Went through life. Got a degree in life. I was a dental model maker, and then 10 years ago, I started losing sight in the other eye, but I've always had art in my life. So it was like, "Well, I'll just put all my effort into art." I was exploring art, how to get back into it visually. Literally, two and a half years ago, I learned braille, and it was the biggest light bulb in my moment in my head because I've always said to people, "I see through a thousand dots." And now those dots mean something. I'm like a modern-day topographer. Just I use a dot instead of a letter, so I have more power.
I was working with braille, and people know braille, but they don't know braille. When you blow up the dot, it's not mean to be seen, so it becomes very confusing for the brain. I was thinking, "How can I make it simpler for people with sight to learn braille? Because then if they learn braille, then it could be integrated to society more." So I came up with color theory. Just how you go about... You learn what McDonald's are. You learn what a Mars bar are because the brain works... It knows patterns. It doesn't see an M. It sees a pattern. It sees a yellow. So I looked at how letters appear in words, the commonality, like ER, ST, ING, and like how a painter paints a landscape or portrait used color theory. So use complementary colors and use shades of color.
When you see my artwork, for instance, E is orange and R is blue, so your complementary colors. ER is a common word you find in the English language. There's 26 colors, and it took me a month to figure that out. When you see my artwork as a sighted person, they can decode it through a key, which we're having at my exhibition in June. A blind person, if they know braille, can come along and physically touch my art because it's just words and experience the art just like a sighted person. That's the beauty of my Decoding Braille color-coded visual art braille.
Melody Goodspeed: I love it. Golly, being able to do those colors together... Having that mixture together just sounds so vivid, and bright, and fun just like you are.
Clarke Reynolds: It is. People say to me... because anyone can do any colors, but it's not random. There's so many layers to my work. It's not just, oh, I've put a dot on a piece of thing, and it's the braille. I thought about it. It's not just the color now. I've been exploring different ways of expressing the dots. There's an exhibition coming up at Moorfields Eye Hospital, the big one in London. It's called Windows to Our Souls.
I've wrote a poem, and I've translated it in braille. The poem is called To See. What I've done is I've used reflective braille. The idea is sighted people will see their reflection because it's do with seeing, To See. That's why I've been taking the English language and using the braille dot to host that language.
Melody Goodspeed: Wow. That's amazing. When we first met, you were really getting your artwork out there, working with some different mediums. Can you talk to us about different mediums that you do your work on?
Clarke Reynolds: Yeah, I started off with fabrics because it was a way of getting back into art and the nature of touching something. I work with buttons. Buttons are great. That's what taught me braille in the first place. I did a piece called My Rosetta Stone. Basically, it was buttons in braille, the A to Z. I learned braille in three weeks just by doing the buttons.
Melody Goodspeed: Wow.
Clarke Reynolds: For me, it kind of transcended. It was like, "Well, now, I use these wooden disks that I paint up." I get them specially made for me, and I've been exploring the size of the disk. I do collage. Now, I've got my first professional studio that I've waited 20 years for, so I've got my own…
Melody Goodspeed: That is so awesome.
Clarke Reynolds: It's amazing. Now, I'm going to explore... Obviously, my degree was in model making, so I'm going to explore resins. I'm going to explore concrete. I want to go big. I want to make these braille dots that I make in the public eye so it's public art. So when you go to a park or on a graffiti on the side of wall, that graffiti could be my graffiti, but you touch it. That's where my art's going to lead me to.
Melody Goodspeed: That is incredible. I love your dream. I was going to ask what's next, but now we're going there. I love it. I have to say too, the story that you have... You're a father yourself, and could you share with us your story with your daughter and the cow? Another fun one.
Clarke Reynolds: Oh, yeah. Yeah, so my daughter's... Her name's Dakota Rain, so very American name. She's seven. She's got mild cerebral palsy, so I'm kind of like a role model for her as well to show no matter your disability, you can achieve your dreams. When I was growing up when I was about five or five, I came across this painting by Franz Marc called The Yellow Cow. Now, when your child, your imagination of a cow is... When you draw a cow, it's white with black spots or black with white spots. That's a cow is. I saw this painting, and it was called The Yellow Cow, this bright yellow cow with purple splotches. It blew my mind away because that young age, it was like, "A cow could be yellow? My God."
During lockdown, my daughter actually painted The Yellow Cow during lockdown. We were doing the master's, so she actually painted that painting. It was a great story. I know the painting is in New York, so hopefully, when I come to America in March and we do this documentary with the B. Fox, that we'll go to the gallery, and I can actually physically see The Yellow Cow in person.
Melody Goodspeed: Oh, wow. I would love for you to see that. That's going to be amazing, and you need to wear your suit.
Clarke Reynolds: Yes, of course. Yes. Yeah. I want to make a range of them. I've obviously got the yellow and black, but I would like to make a range of different colored suits, different colored spots. Also, I've got an idea of a TV program, where I become this kind of artist that lives in a braille room, a round room, and everything has got braille on. I use my suit, and I take a dot off my suit, and it becomes a magic suit. We jump into that dot, and then we go and meet an inspirational vision-impaired person. It could be a chef. It could be a rock climber. It could be an artist. We have a chat, and at the end of that episode, I create an artwork of braille inspired by the person that I've met. I thought it'd be a great show to do.
Melody Goodspeed: That would be. Talking about jumping into imagination for sure and in an inclusive way, which I really think, Clarke, as you're talking about this, and I'm listening to you, is you talk about our children and bringing them up, but also too by having this inclusion and other people learning about braille, it kind of opens up their minds to different possibilities. Can you speak to maybe people that are sighted that have seen your art and what they learned from it?
Clarke Reynolds: Oh, great. The first question they always ask is what is braille, and so I really do simplify it. I say, "Well, you know what a domino is. In that six-dot cell is your alphabet, your modern language, your hashtags." That's the first... They go, "Oh." Then I always say, "This is key. The negative space is as important as the positive space." They always get confused with A, B, K, and L because, obviously, those letters are the ones that have the dots on just one side. I do workshops with my color-coded braille, and they always put the A in, and then they put the next letter straight over to it, and I always say to them, "No, it has to have a gap. It's key." That's my tip to people that are sighted about braille is the negative space is as important as the positive.
Melody Goodspeed: No, that's totally true because if it's too close together, it's not going to work.
Clarke Reynolds: No.
Melody Goodspeed: When people do experience it, and they get to see it and learn braille... Now, you talked about the brain picking up patterns, which is so true, and how you learned how to read braille with buttons. When you put those patterns together, and you're watching them have it come to life at [inaudible], I mean do... the response that you get from that.
Clarke Reynolds: They…
Melody Goodspeed: Can they then understand it?
Clarke Reynolds: Yeah, they love it. I think children love it because it's kind of like a code. Braille is a code, so when you give it color, it's almost like you're following a jigsaw or a little LEGO model. You have my key, and then you're not quite sure what the colors are going to be because it all depends on the word they choose, all right? Then I did an adult class, mature adult class last week with 30 mature adults, and they really were focused. They have a cup of tea, and coffee, and their cake, but when they got their dots, they were really paying attention as if they were doing a jigsaw. I think that's the way the brain works. If you're learning something new, like a Sudoku puzzle, it must release an endorphin in your brain, and obviously, that helps you be excited and inquisical about it.
Melody Goodspeed: That is so exciting. I love it. Are you... because there's so much I want to ask you. I know we're short of time here. I know that you recently went on tour, and I know last time we spoke, I guess it was several months ago, and you were going on your very first art tour just you, not with another artist, but yourself. Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Clarke Reynolds: Yeah, I had my first solo braille exhibition called Decoding Braille, Decoding Me, and it was about the color-coded theory that I created. It was an 18-month project, 500 hours to create 26 canvases. Each canvas was the same color as the letter it begin with, and the decoding me... I chose 26 words that describe my practice. A was amplify. B was braille, obviously. C was coding. Obviously, the harder letters... X was my favorite. X was xenagogue or xenagogue, depending how you want to pronounce it. It means to guide a stranger.
Melody Goodspeed: Wow.
Clarke Reynolds: So I'm guiding you through braille, and I love that word to describe…
Melody Goodspeed: I never knew that. I'm going to add that to my vocabulary. Thank you.
Clarke Reynolds: There you go. Because xenophobia is a fear of strangers, so xenagogue is to guide a stranger.
Melody Goodspeed: That is awesome. You are so fun to talk to, Clarke. Keep going.
Clarke Reynolds: Yeah. That was amazing. What made it for me was people came, and without realizing... I set up the chairs in the middle because I wanted it to be for them to sit down and take it all in. A couple people, they took their notepads out. They stayed there for about 40 minutes because once they decoded one art piece, they got the buzz, and it was like, "Ooh, I want to decode another one." That's the beauty of my art. It's not like, "Ooh, that's pretty. Just walk away from it." You want to spend time looking at my art.
The blind people that came... I had my blind friend. She's an artist from London, and she was there with her daughter, and her daughter decoded it through sight through the key, and she decoded it through tough. She spent three hours decoding my whole exhibition. At the end, her and her daughter were trying to race who could decode it quicker through touch or through sight, which is amazing.
Melody Goodspeed: It is awesome. I'm hearing a lot of collaboration, that braille is bringing collaboration. Louis Braille... my gosh. He is like your modern-day programmer if you think about it. John and I had a conversation with one of our guests talking about this. It's just to get in his mind... Coming up with this is just brilliant, and what you're doing is brilliant, Clarke.
Clarke Reynolds: Yeah, I'm trying to bring braille into the 21st century because I just found out a horrible stat in this country. I only think like 3% of blind people in the UK actually know braille. Isn't that awful? If we don't start using it and using it correctly i.e. male and female toilets, so big M or big F... The Braille dot doesn't have to be so small.
It's like skim reading. You don't read the whole thing. With braille, you don't need an essay. You just need certain words. When you going past it with your hand, you just brush across it and go, "Oh. Oh, that's male. Oh, that's female toilet." That's all you need, but then use color, so it's not an afterthought. You team up with a big brand, a hotel chain, and use their colors so it becomes part of the building, not just an afterthought. Then if it was more around... Otherwise, we're going to learn it. We're going to lose it to technology. Technology is great for blind people. Don't get me wrong, but technology can fail. If people aren't going to use it, we're going to lose it.
Melody Goodspeed: Right. I was going to ask you about where you would like to see braille go, and I completely agree with you. One of the things I can say is with braille, especially when it comes to speaking or even reading, just having those paper in your hands... We are going into an age... Even technology is going, but I agree with you. There's so many even ways that braille is so critical in our technology too. No, but you bring a whole different spirit.
I really want to go back right before we go to have questions because we're already there, but one thing that I wanted to add was I loved what you said about having the colors of the hotel because then it's not an afterthought because you are bringing inclusion to the forefront. It seems to be like inclusion... People think of it afterwards or don't think of it at all. I love how you're bringing that to light. If you could tell anybody right now, tell our audience if they're coming to design something and new, whether it's technology, whether it's a building, whether it's this... What advice would you give them as far as building in that element of inclusion?
Clarke Reynolds: Well, obviously, most people when they're building a building, they always think of the wheelchair access, which is great. That's law. That's legislation. It's got to be a certain width, but everyone loves to touch pre-COVID. COVID, we weren't allowed to touch anything, but I think people are going to start missing that contact, and what a great legacy after COVID that we start to put more not just braille, but tactile elements into our buildings, especially hospitals. Hospitals are the worst. The idea of you could feel on the ground that, oh, this way to pediatrics or this way to gynecology or this way to the cancer unit, but what if there's a tactile pavement that literally you know, that you can feel. Think, "Hang on a minute." So you're not going to get lost because sighted people get lost in a hospital, but if you know that certain texture on the wall or on the floor is part of that line that takes you somewhere, then that'd be a great... I mean a new hospital would be the best place to explore tactility in an inclusive society.
Melody Goodspeed: So true. And you're building in like, "Hey, take the green hallway too that has the bumps or the triangle pattern." Yeah, it would totally. People do get lost. I mean I'm blind, but prior to losing my eyesight, I had a very hard time finding my way out of a paper bag, so that would have been great for me for sure. Clarke, thank you so very much. I am so excited.
We have our fun and fabulous, John Mackin, who is our manager of PR, our PR manager at AFB. I always do this. John, I'm sorry, but he is fantastic. What'd you think of this conversation, John?
John Mackin: Oh, it was fabulous. It's nice because so much of what we do... When we do these, Clarke, we try to time them to things sometimes, and we just did a whole bunch of employment-focused ones to gear up for October, which is National Disability Employment Awareness Month. It was nice to take a right-hand turn and just talk about art for 20 minutes, half-hour, so I very much enjoyed it.
I do have some questions for you. I chose this first one because I think it's such a fantastic question to ask an artist. Without further ado, Clarke, what do people misunderstand about you the most?
Clarke Reynolds: The misunderstanding is the blindness. People think if you're blind, you see nothing at all, complete darkness, so they wonder how I'm doing what I'm doing, working and color and things like that. Well, I say, "I have a memory." The other day, I lost the ability to see pink. It was weird. I was working, and I saw it a couple weeks ago, and I knew what pink was, and I lost the ability to see pink. It was like, "Oh, that's really strange." For me, it's about the changing people's misconception of what blindness is through my art, not just because I use braille but because of the nature, that I use color, and that I grid out my work. It's like it's all about memory. I've done art for 25 years. I mean I may look 40, right? I feel like I'm 16 years old, but it's all down to memory really.
John Mackin: Well stated. Let's see. Clarke, tell me about the three most influential people in your life and how they impacted you.
Clarke Reynolds: Oh, that's the most amazing question ever. Oh. For me now, there's one person without a doubt, and that's a guy called Steve Buggle. He's the director of Yellow Edge Gallery. Two years ago literally to the day, he saw the interview I did on BBC, and he turned around, and contacted me, and said, "Would you like an exhibition?" From that moment, I've not looked back since. He's now taken me under his wing, and anything I need with regards to working with other galleries and stuff, he said he'll support me in any way. For me, he has been a big person in my life.
I suppose then artists, Seurat. From a early age, I was a big fan of pointillism. I always used pointillism in any medium, the build-up of dots and layers of dots, so Seurat is an artist that I really love and a great way to what I'm doing in my art now. He's just fantastic.
Then the third person... I'm not close to my family, so there's no family members. Oh, I suppose if I had to say something now, it would be the connections I've made through the... in the States. So I would include everyone in the States. You've got Kristen. You've got Scott. You got B. Fox. You got Michelle. You've got yourself, Melody. Without a doubt, you've really embraced me. These last couple years have been a whirlwind of a journey, and like I said, I truly bow down to you in the States for taking me on this journey with you.
Melody Goodspeed: Aw. Thank you.
John Mackin: I like that. The last answer was a category. I like that.
Melody Goodspeed: Yes, I loved it.
John Mackin: Well done. Clarke, if you could have a cup of coffee with any historical figure, who would you choose?
Clarke Reynolds: Louis Braille. It has to be, doesn't it?
Melody Goodspeed: Yeah.
Clarke Reynolds: It has to be because when he designed it, obviously, he designed it as I think it's like 15 or 18 dots. It obviously was used as a code for the Napoleonic Wars, but would he like what I'm doing or would he turn in his grave? Yeah, so Louis Braille would be the perfect person to talk to.
John Mackin: Melody and I are also laughing because we occasionally ask the same questions to different guests, and our friend and former colleague, Paul Schrader, had the same answer.
Melody Goodspeed: Yes.
John Mackin: Fascinating.
Melody Goodspeed: Yes, he called him the mad programmer. Also too what I loved about it too is how did he come up with that? Just like, "Hey. Hey, by the way, we're going to use this?" Nuts.
Clarke Reynolds: Yeah.
Melody Goodspeed: It's good stuff. No, I like that answer, and I think he'd love it, especially the color theory to it.
John Mackin: Yeah, we're going to direct Paul to this episode so that he can meet a fellow Louis Braille fan.
Melody Goodspeed: Oh, yes. Yes.
John Mackin: Clarke, here's another one. Over your career as an artist, what do you think is the most important lesson you've learned?
Clarke Reynolds: Ooh, that's really… [crosstalk]. Tenacious is never give up, never. I mean even when I had sight, I got my degree. I must have sent out 400 CVs. You always get knock backs, knock backs, knock backs. I've worked hard to get where I am today. Regardless of the sight loss, I'm the busiest artist working in Portsmouth, and anyone would tell you that, but I don't see it as a chore. I love it. If I woke up in a day, and I started doing my art, and I thought, "Oh my God. I don't really want to do this," then I'd probably give it up because I've always wanted to do it, so it's not like a nine to five job. Yeah, never give up. That's key.
Melody Goodspeed: That is such a good response. I like it. Do we have time for one more, John?
John Mackin: Okay. We do have one that we typically use as the closer, and I'm dying to hear your response to this one. Name three books that you would recommend to our audience.
Clarke Reynolds: Oh, you can't do that to me. I mean I'm one of these readers. When I had sight, I used to have five books on the go, and now I'm on audio. Now, I've got audio. I'm doing exactly the same. I love listening to about a couple chapters of each book, and I go onto something else. Oh my God. Oh.
John Mackin: It's not easy.
Melody Goodspeed: Well, hey, maybe…
Clarke Reynolds: It's not easy at all.
Melody Goodspeed: Hey, well…
Clarke Reynolds: When I was sighted, and I read, I did really enjoy The Bourne Ultimatum books. I think they were great, The Bourne Identity, Bourne Ultimatum, and The Bourne Supremacy.
John Mackin: Oh, yeah. The Jason Bourne Trilogy.
Clarke Reynolds: I think they would be…
Melody Goodspeed: Jason Bourne... yes.
Clarke Reynolds: Oh, they were really engrossing. Now, with audio, it all depends on the person reading obviously.
Melody Goodspeed: The narrator?
Clarke Reynolds: Yeah. Stephen Fry is God, isn't he? It has to be the Harry Potter books and the Discworld novels, which he narrates. I mean Discworld novels are great anyway. They're so out there, like myself. So I would suggest them, yeah.
Melody Goodspeed: I love a fellow Harry Potter fan. Those books were awesome, and the narrator is amazing.
John Mackin: I mean, the narrator can make or break an audiobook, I think.
Melody Goodspeed: Oh, yes.
Clarke Reynolds: Oh my God. Oh. The worst narrator is David Tennant. Oh my God. That guy will put you to sleep within 10 minutes. It's so monotonal. I mean oh my God, so yeah.
Melody Goodspeed: We don't need to turn this into a critique of narrators.
John Mackin: Oh, dear. Let's quit while we're ahead.
Melody Goodspeed: Yes.
Clarke Reynolds: Yeah.
John Mackin: Okay. Clarke, tell us your social media handles and websites so we can share with our audience.
Clarke Reynolds: Yeah. My website is www.seeingwithoutseeing.com, and it's also linked into my Instagram account, which is under @blind.braille.artist. Yeah.
Melody Goodspeed: I love it, and I thank you so much for being here. Your enthusiasm is incredibly infectious. I love how you're spreading color, joy, and education all through the world. You're just doing it, and just watching you even in this past year just blossom... It is amazing, and it's just such a joy to be here with you today. Thank you so much for spending time with us, Clarke.
Clarke Reynolds: Oh, no. Oh, thank you. Yeah, I can't wait to listen to it back. That's the enjoyment, isn't it?
Melody Goodspeed: Yes.
Clarke Reynolds: And the response. People do contact me and say, "Oh, we heard you on so-and-so," so that's really nice.
Melody Goodspeed: Oh, good. I'm glad. Well, I guess the…
John Mackin: It was our pleasure.
Melody Goodspeed: Yes, and I will be contacting you soon to maybe get a piece of art myself for our new house, so I'm excited about it. Thank you, guys, so much for joining us today with Clarke and with John, and to learn more about the American Foundation for the Blind and our programs, please visit arb.org. We thank you so much for being here with us today, and have a great one. Bye, everybody.
