Brighton Festival & Fringe
When AC took Sam to get her hair cut at “Mr. Topper’s” last November, we learned that the Brits say “fringe” and not “bangs” for the hair that lies upon one’s forehead above the eyes. But apparently they use “fringe” also the way we Yanks do– to describe something on the periphery or the outer edge of something central or mainstream.
Two concurrent festivals started up in Brighton this past weekend: the Brighton Festival and the Brighton Festival Fringe. I honestly couldn’t tell what was fringe and what was not, though probably the girl walking around with “let’s do it again” printed on the back of her pink short shorts handing out fliers for the “No Fit State Circus” was probably fringe. Probably. This is Brighton, after all.
On Saturday we walked down the promenade toward the Palace Pier and caught the tail end of the children’s parade. The theme was the four elements. Apparently fire was last.
Then we had a picnic lunch in the Pavilion gardens. There were loads of fringey circus people there, including a guy on stilts. But we also saw an art installation by Anish Kapoor called “Sky Mirror.” That pretty much tells you what it was. This was not fringe.
But here’s a, dare I say, fringe shot taken by yours truly from on top of AC’s shoulders. We have our fringey moments (to Sam’s delight):
Sunday we decided to check out some of the Artist Open Houses. Every weekend during the four week festival, artists open up their homes and display their work. The Open Houses are organized into trails, so you can walk around a single neighborhood and visit 10 or more showings. We decided that 5 would be our limit, since we have a 3.5 year old of unpredictable attention span and patience. We also decided to walk west into Hove, part of the city of Brighton & Hove, but definitely, as I chronicled last year, on the psychological periphery of Brighton.
We ended up visiting only three houses, but one of these was actually a cafe and was showing the work of several artists. We saw paintings, charcoal drawings, photographs, jewelry, and sculptures. To our amazement, Sam was heard to say frequently during the walk, “When are we going to get to the next Open House?” She loved the jewelry. She loved exploring other people’s houses. She especially loved collecting the artists’ business cards.
She also liked these stone heads we saw popping up out of the foliage in the garden of The Happy House:
AC was quite taken with Happy House photographer Tony Bowall’s shots of the beach huts in Hove. We decided to go look at them ourselves, so on our way back to Brighton (ultimate destination the pub for Sunday roast) we walked along the promenade in Hove. Tiny colorful beach huts line the promenade. From what we could tell, people use them to store beach chairs and other sundries, though we did see some outfitted like tiny studios with hobs (burners) and lighting and cushions.
Some were open and displaying artwork as well. Fringe artwork, not listed in the Open House catalog.
Inspired by Tony Bowall, AC spent the next half an hour photographing various locks on the closed beach huts. Sam directed him. “Daddy, take a picture of the pink one! Oh, how about the purple one! Daddy, look at this yellow one!!!” She really got into it. So did AC. He took 95 pictures of beach hut locks.
I could see the beautiful beginnings of a father-daughter artistic partnership. Problem was, I was starving and the more we tried to head back to central Brighton for Sunday roast, the more we got distracted by art and festival. Here’s Sam and me checking out a zither-type instrument mounted on tubes that resembled a scorpion’s legs.
She liked the zither-scorpion and the artist’s other metal contraptions, but Sam kept talking about those beach huts in Hove. This morning she said, “Let’s live in a beach hut, Mommy!” When I said it would be too small for the three of us, she said, “Well you and I can live in it.” Then I said that I preferred to live with her father. “Well I will live in a beach hut.”
Who knows, maybe in a few years Sam will debut the Fringe Artist Open Hut Trail in Hove. The girl likes living on the edge.
