Books, tapestries and giraffes

I spend the day in Edinburgh on an Artist's Date, even though I was very far from in the mood. But I was determined to catch the Paint . Print . Page exhibition by the artist book group, a member of which (Susie Wilson) taught us several books to make at the recent Thistle meeting. The exhibition is on in McNaughtan's Bookshop and can still be found there till this coming Saturday (don't forget the bookshop only opens at 11.00). It was wonderful and I also managed to pick up a little booklet (published in the 19th Century) about grave epitaphs for only £3, a real steal.

Then passing the Theatre Royal I went on to the City Art Centre where there was a wonderful exhibition of tapestries. Called That was then: this is now, it also incorporated embroideries. It was inspirational. Specially LOVED the work by Jo McDonald who worked with vintage paper and music to produce her work Also the embroideries by Anna Ray, with such titles as Irrational, consisting of the words I will not be irrational repeated over and over again. A piece with the text: In a way I would be kept, In a way I would be lost had a really serious message hidden in it's beautiful simplicity. After that I paid my first (and also last!) visit ever to the Edinburgh Dungeon, which was a lot less scary than I had been looking for and further irrated me as the whole show is in English (or really Scottish) when there were only 3 English speaking people in my group, everyone else was Spanish or French and they literally didn't have a clue. And at a cost of £16.50 per person it was also daylight robbery! I thought it would be fun but it so wasn't.

Many of the attractions today did have a strict No Photography rule so I had to find other images to show, such as the Theatre Royal and these giraffes!

These giraffes are positioned by the roundabout near John Lewis and leading to Leith Walk. I don't usually go to this side of town so hadn't come across them. They were stunning and very large as you can see. I blipped the face (shown at the top of this post) today as I found it the most stunning picture. The giraffes are accompanied by engraved text on the pavement which reads:

Giraffes! a people

who live between earth and skies

each in his own religious steeple

keeping lighthouse with his eyes.

It didn't say who had produced it but what fantastic text for a giraffe.