Le Temoin Bleu - Blue Witness

Blue witness - southern France

Several years ago I talked with artist friends who I 

sometimes worked and exhibited with, about ways of 

presenting, showing and exhibiting art, ways of sharing, 

outside of the usual spaces of art galleries. In Edinburgh's 

Festival we are used to seeing art everywhere, performers, 

music, visual art, photographs, sculpture, readings and role 

playing on the streets, as well as in buildings so that the line 

between art and 'real life' whatever that is, is blurred to such 

an extent that you sometimes feel that just walking along a 

street is to take part in ongoing street theatre, a spontaneous 

carnival. 


I first saw poems on transport systems when 

travelling on Dublin's Dart train in the '80s, and I was 

delighted when poems of my own were displayed in 

Glasgow's Underground in the '90s, and on Edinburgh's 

buses. I've written about one of our exhibitions in the Blue 

Dolphin post here. And one of the artists has since created a 

blog, Forest Dream Weaver, to display her beautiful

paintings and wall hangings . I particularly like the way she 

has teamed up her paintings with photographs from nature, 

which has sometimes been the inspiration for her art.

Blue witness - Paris

Cities are places where a lot of people congregate and pass 

through, but there are other places where art can be created 

and Le Chemin des Grands Jardins shows the way Roger 

Dautais uses the materials he finds in nature to create land 

art. These intricate and sensitive creations may be seen by 

few people, perhaps by none at all, in their own

environment, but many of us are thankful that he takes 

photographs of them so we are able to see them on our 

screens, even if we will never see them in their own habitat.

The image reproduced with kind permission by Le Chemin 

des Grands Jardins

Le témoin bleu de Kermadio pour Dritange

I was so pleased to have this one dedicated to me that I wrote

the quinta, 5-line poem, below, as a response to it.

comme des gouttes de pluie rouge

les baies penchent sur l’échelle de pierres

les gouttes rouges du temps -

les plus doux -

s’étendent vers le bleu, le témoin, l'originel

English version -

drops of red rain, 

these berries lean on the sculpture of stone -

red drops of time are the sweetest – 

they stretch up to the blue,

our first witness

Blue witness by the sea, Scotland, solstice