Alison Schwabe
Ebb&Flow #32, 2023
Cottons ( other artist's offcuts and commercial hand dyed) wool/polyester blend batting, nylon and polyester threads. 12" x 12"
This series theme is of the uneven and everchanging nature of Life. another artist's comment that "red and turquoise are always terrific" prompted my colour scheme for my contribution to the 2023 SAQA Benefit Auction.
Alison Schwabe
Caribbean Crush, 2022
Cotton offcuts, polyester fabric, polyester batting, nylon threads 98cm x 97cm
A mosaic of Central America and Caribbean vacation memories set against a backdrop of bright sunshine, clear blue waters, mountain peaks and valleys covered with lush jungle greenery, splashed with colours of tropical flowers, beautiful textiles and fresh produce markets.
Alison Schwabe
So Many Coffins, 2021
Scrap leather, cottons, polyester batting, nylon and polyester threads. 142cmw x 89cmh
Pandemic Patterns series, #5. As the Covid-19 pandemic spread around the world in 2021, we saw footage of bodies lying on streets outside hospitals, piled in freezer trucks and banked up in funeral homes. What shocked me most was the many acres of freshly cleared fields covered with rows of freshly dug graves, where many burials took place without a single mourner present. While the pandemic abates in some parts of the world, in other regions there are still too many coffins being hastily placed in fields of freshly dug graves.
Alison Schwabe
Slideshow, 2015
cottons, Woo blend batting, polyester threads, nylon-backed Mylar 120cmw x 100cmh
Traditional quilt making continues to influence my art through the grid layout of most of my designs. Repetition represents calm stability, and in today’s turbulent world I value living in a reasonably orderly home, community and country. This work hung on a wall here since 2015 and remained untitled until earlier this year, when a friend commented it reminded her of the slide nights of our youth, in those distant days before TV arrived in our homes. Our parents would gather us all together in the living room to enjoy returned travellers’ slides and hear them talk about their observations, experiences and highlights of their trips in interesting, distant places. They were in effect sharing personal travelogues, and these evenings always concluded with supper of scones or cake with cordial for us kids, and tea or beer for the adults.
Alison Schwabe
Variants Of Interest, 2020
Polyester fabrics and batting, nylon threads and leather. 142cmh x 89cmw
Pandemic Patterns series, #4. Lingering in the invisible vapour of an infected person’s outward breath are millions of the little spikey particles of highly contagious, rapidly transmissible Covid-19 virus that attach to human cells. Constantly dividing and multiplying, they occasionally develop slight differences causing them to change character, thus becoming new “Variants of Interest”. Some of those changes are threatening new versions of the virus, but most are relatively benign. Look carefully and you will see quite a few with subtle differences …
Alison Schwabe
Pandemic Patterns, 2020
Cottons, polyester threads, wool blend batting. 72cmw x 94cmh
"People of every skin colour, all ages, different cultures and many faiths, vast numbers of struggling bodies finally surrender their souls, and are carefully laid side by side in hastily dug graves in hastily cleared fields. Others are stacked in cool storage awaiting cremation. There's little opportunity to comfort the dying or farewell the dead, and countless burials take place with only the grave diggers in attendance. Ghastly new patterns spread out on the Earth's surface, reflecting pain and grief that will last long after the graves are overgrown ... ashes to ashes, dust to dust."
