Festival Diary: Gothic twist on art show is well worth a gander

Skein, an exhibition in Glass & Thompson on Dundas Street, features work by six Scottish women artists. From very different careers, they came together to encourage and support one another as skeins of geese do - flying long distances and taking turns to lead.

The show at the cafe and deli - a New Town gathering spot featured in Alexander McCall Smith's Scotland Street series - includes etchings by Annabel Macmillan, formerly a specialist in antique textiles, and Lynne Haxton-Locke, a fashion designer and now art teacher.

Jyoti Sigouin, who for fashion houses like Armani, is showing cushions and other work, while Joss Watson, wildlife photographer, has photo-etchings. while Diane Anderson painted the white beaches and craggy shores of the Western Isles.

Most exotic of the lot, however, may be Sara Lodge, who organised the exhibition and is showing etchings of animals, including a fantastical dragon. She lectures on Victorian literature at St Andrews University, but is also billed as a vampire expert.

An authority on Dracula and other Gothic writings like Dracula, she's been in demand as a pundit and essayist on works like the Twilight series or Seth Grahame-Smith cult rewrite of Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.

"It's interesting that vampires have had such a renaissance," she said. "One reason, I suspect, is that they embody our desire to live for ever and be beautiful for ever, in a sense to be 18 for ever. But they are also anxious about their own consumerism, they need blood of some kind to survive. They also make sex dangerous."