VANISH MAGIC BACK ISSUES VANISH MAGIC MAGAZINE 58 May 2019 | Page 9

ANDI GLADWIN REMEMBERS HIS FRIEND ANTHONY OWEN PHOTOS COURTESY SEAN EAST PHOTOGRAPHY Thank you to Andi Gladwin for allowing us re-print his recent BLOG where he shared his personal memory of his friend Anthony Owen. Our friend and colleague Anthony Owen sadly passed away sud- denly this week. It has shocked the magic community: Anthony was an ever-present, prolific, and kind magician and TV producer, and all of us at Vanishing Inc. team had the great pleasure of work- ing with him at our conventions, and on other projects. I first met Anthony when I was fourteen years old. He was one of the key players of The Young Magicians Club, of which I was a member. He was extremely supportive to me at that time and, in the days before emails, he would write me letters of support and encouragement. He was a successful magician in his mid- twenties who had already published a successful journal, travelled the world (on an innovative scholarship style programme that he had arranged for himself ), started a company called Dynamic FX, and had just started to produce television shows. I was just a kid, beginning my interest in magic — yet he still took the time to help and encourage me, when I'm sure he had much more important things on his plate. That mentorship turned into a friendship. When I moved to Lon- don in about 2007, we reconnected and formed a friendship and would meet on occasion for lunch or dinner. He told me that he had always wanted to compile his material into a book but that he couldn't find the time to finish it, and we joked that one day, I'd find a way to convince him to complete the project. After I moved away from London, I worked on a couple of televi- sion shows with him behind the scenes — one time, he called me into his office for a day of consultancy and when I got there he told me that his plan for the day was to just hang out and talk magic. That's exactly what we did. It's what we always did; right up to the last dinner we had together a few months ago. Little did I know that the joke of publishing his book would become a reality. After we formed Vanishing Inc., Josh and I talked to Anthony about getting the book finished. It took a while, but we got there, and I know he was extremely proud of the end result. The cover artwork by Michal Kociolek portrayed him just as I'll always remember him: casually sat back on a director's chair, learning about a magic trick (or, just as often, casually leant back VANISH MAGAZINE www.VanishMagazine.com 9