Peebles Arts Festival

 I spend the afternoon at my exhibition and took the above picture through the window of the gallery into the courtyard of the Chambers Institution. You can see the Peebles War Memorial (with the copper roof) and also some sculptures that aren't normally there. They form part of the Peebles Arts Festival. It was a great afternoon at the show, meeting up again with a fellow blipper who to my joy bought one of my pieces (thanks, Paula!).

I also met up with a French photographer Angela Mejias who is in town for the festival where she has an exhibition of her pictures. She comes from Hendaye, a place in France twinned with Peebles. During her visit she told me about an exhibition she is organizing of art sized 12 x 12cm to be shown in Pasaia San Pedro in Spain and Hendaye in France and invited me to take part. Of course I said yes!

 Naturally I wanted to see her photographs and after John had collected me from my exhibition we wandered down Peebles High Street and then turned into Pennel's Courtyard where her show was on and discovered that we had strayed into a little corner of France in the process, as you can see above. There was lots going on. A performance by Marco Bardetorte, a singer and while he was singing the artist Bruno Aguerre was painting a mural.

 There was also a performance by Mysterieuses Coiffures (Christophe Pavla) as you can see above.and below.

Here you can see Marco Bardetorte  and Bruno Aguerre performing. The sleeping dog wasn't part of the act but was a wonderful addition to the street scene. There were also French crepes for sale so John and I found ourselves a table and sat back and enjoyed it all. When the singer launched in to the French version of La porte d'Amsterdam the afternoon took on a surreal but perfect atmosphere!

I was very impressed with the painter too. He used highly unusual materials to paint with such as netting and at one stage was throwing paint at the canvas from a bucket.

With a great result as you can see above.