Lines, dots, circles – the fabric and leather samples to the left are some of the various ways I have used them or plan to use them. Why I use them and how they symbolise what I want to say in my art are partially covered in the following sentences:
Holes and ragged edges symbolise denudation, wearing down, decay, age, falling apart, a sense of the passage of time. As time passes marks are left showing traces of what was there before. These ideas apply as much to a landscape as to a human life, a body, a mind, a relationship, any living thing, indeed anything that exists, from universe down to atomic particle level. Is lace, or cheese for that matter, a series of holes connected by medium, or is it the other way round? Leather is symbollic to me. On a very simple level I will just say that as a material I can work with it embodies many personal aspects of being an expatriate Australian living temporarily in another country.

A hot topic of discussion on one of the lists I belong to has raised the issue, again, of cultural misappropriation of specific imagery by artists who have no known connection with that culture. Of course, the viewer has no way of knowing these days who is connected with what, and how, and assumptions can be totally wrong. A list member (an Aussie) commented on what appeared to be an Australian Aboriginal design in publicity for an exhibition by a north American artist. If I’d seen it before she raised the question, I too probably would have assumed the artist to be indigienous Australian or someone using Australian Aboriginal imagery, which to us Aussies is a no-no, see the next paragraph. But in the wider context of this particular artist’s work and reputation, I feel quite sure it is just an arrangement of dots lines and circles in a personal statement that just happens to look Aboriginal to anyone familiar with Australian Aboriginal art. In different colours I doubt any connection would have crossed any viewer’s mind at all. Symbol plus colour is a powerful combination, but every viewer brings all his own background with him, and therein lies ground that can cause difficulty.


There is now a strong legal framework around the use Aboriginal imagery in all art and design, with a recent history of successful legal action against people using such imagery inappropriately or without right to it. There is a similar sensitivity in New Zealand to Maori symbols, and probably this is so in many other countries now. It has long been the case in the US that only Native Americans may label their work as being Indian made or designed, although I think these days people there tend to use their tribal name more than the term ‘ Indian’ which besides being inaccurate is so open to abuse by anyone to claim it for commercial advantage. Who is and who is not indigenous, is contentious everywhere in this context.

In my inexperienced and ignorant youth, some of my first quilts did indeed use images gathered from the petroglyphs in the US Southwest. ( to see some examples, go to gallery pages on https://www.alisonschwabe.com/ and click on the early series of Ancient Expressions series of quilts some of which are shown there) Many of the symbols in that rock art appear on cave and canyon walls, ceramic, painted, carved and other similar surfaces all around the world. Dots, lines, circles, squares, triangles, crosses, arcs and concentric versions of them, spirals, wiggly lines and so on – these are all universal symbols, primal is the word I use – they are etched in the human brain wherever it is. So too are human figures – we all recognise them – except that representing these and various animals, weapons and the local environment (eg weather elements) inevitably gives rise to distinct regional styles. I now feel strongly that an artist wanting to use such elements needs to think carefully about his use of them, and the appropriateness to what he wants to say.

Decades ago at university I majored in ancient civilisations and geography. The marks left by Man’s activity in and on the earth’s surface have fascinated me, and influenced more than one series of textile pieces.

A major and early series of art quilts considering these concepts was my “Ancient Expressions” series, numbering I – XIV, but still ‘open’ I feel. Maybe there won’t be more – those ideas are taking me down other paths – and time is passing by. At the time I made those works, 1988-93, I was living in Denver and I felt that since I had been to some of those sites, and had actually seen them, therefore it would be OK to use them. I also knew that some of the people who made them originally have disappeared and it is said by experts that some of the meanings in those petroglyphs are not fully known to people living in that area today.

Actually, on looking over the series, the only specific image I think I could be accused of as misappropriating from that region in particular is a stencilled human figure with very wide shoulders, and if I were adding to that series, any human figure would appear much more generic, less southwestern. The rest are the primal symbols I referred to, and mostly used in quilting patterns I devised. The use of universal symbols was really a seminal concept behind the whole series.