Wednesday 8 August 2012

July Sweepings


I'm starting my July round up with a picture that was left over from June. We spotted a bit of construction going on at the top of the Mound in Edinburgh. I'll just take a wee note of it and stash it away till I find out what it becomes, I though.


Near the beginning of the month it grew into five chunky old Olympic rings (I see a little horticulture has happened in the flower bed too)


Stepping back a little - a good couple of hundred yards away, right across the other side of Princes Street - here's how they look in the context of the town. There a couple more pictures of these at the Occasional Scotland blog who got to them first.


On our little tour north we stopped for lunch at Killin (Rolls, a banana, jaffa cakes, that kind of thing, all washed down with a nice cup of tea in the lounge of the Hotel Almera). Afterwards we went for a walk and viewed the Falls of Dockart from the bridge on the way into the town.




Early in the month I clocked this wooden head down by the harbour square.



It was advertising an exhibition of work from Colin Park (who made the head), Ian Cameron-Smith and Claire Cameron-Smith

Colin Park paints these large canvases  with stylised heads


He doesn't spare the paint.



He also made these walking sticks



This table was made by Ian Cameron-Smith.


As was this mirror.


A set of poppy prints from Claire Cameron-Smith - not from the exhibition as I thought I already had a big pile of photos of her work. Wrong again, so this is taken from the net. During last years arts and craft trail here in Kircudbright, I dropped into her studio which you can read bout here.


One of the art shops in the town had this lovely bookplate by Harold Nelson in the window. (for all you philatelists out there, Harold Nelson also designed this)


I spotted this butterfly while I was wandering up the street - much less photoshy than your average butterfly.


I spotted this carving at the crannog centre - I saved it for this blog as it based on a Pictish design and Pictish art dates from much later dates than the crannog, leading up to about 800AD. This, and the next piece, were completely unlabelled so I can't tell you anything about it.


I like the designs of Pictish animals but was also impressed by the way the sculptor has pushed it a little to have the more realistic boar emerging from the Pictish design.


A few miles down the road from the crannog centre I passed the Croft Moraig stone circle. It's far from a simple stone circle. Archeologists have detected three distinct periods of building at the circle starting with (like Stonehenge) a wooden circle, which of course is long since rotted away, which was replaced by a stone circle. In a third period another circle was built round the first one. There are a few extra stones in and out of the circle too. It is thought to date from about 3000BC and was in use for about 1000 years.






Occasionally my cabin at work looks out into the sunset - it makes some fine viewing before bedtime.


4 comments:

Shundo said...

Just musing on the more-or-less straight line that connects the crannog boar with the Harold Nelson...
And whose idea was it to put a corrugated barn cheek-by-jowl with the stone circle? Honestly!

Dominic Rivron said...

Those Olympic rings are a lot more high tech that the ones I saw being built down here. A bloke was working on the grass with two sticks, a piece of string and some of that paint they paint football pitch lines with.

Awesome sunset. Like the table a lot, too.

Sandy's witterings said...

Don't worry Shundo, in 100 years time the circle will still be there but the barn will have long since fallen down. I wonder who will be at the end of the boar and Harold Nelson's straight line by that time.

Edinburgh's olympic rings are certainly a major construction (I'll bet they cost the price of a decent sized house to put up).

It was indeed a great sunset, even allowing for the grubbiness of my cabin window. Alas I am getting a new cabin at work which will not have a window - so good sunsets are likely to go unnoticed now.

Shundo said...

Good point about the shed.