Greetings from Montevideo, from Alison Schwabe, Aussie quiltmaker

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 http://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.

Continuing in a series of this name, this little 12" piece, ironically enough "Ebb & Flow 12", made one day last week, is for the SAQA fundraiser later this year. Pretty well a potholder size, I consider it really more of a sample. there seems to be a trend to smaller qworks that are more easily travelled as a collection, and more affordable. I am in two minds about the development. Recently a gallery here sold two small pieces of my work, so it is time I produced a few more and thought seriously about their presentation; there's been a lot of discussion on the SAQA list recently about possibilities, and I have been mulling them over. The two sold were mounted on what looked like sand blasted glass - actually finely hand sanded perspex - fairly labour intesnsive to get looking good, but I will also do some mounted on canvas stretcher frames for comparison.

The quilting in this little work is machined metallic pewter along the edge where print meets plain - and by doing that I learned something I won't do in the next one I make, #13, which will be larger. The surface will look very much the same but the metallic embroidery will be done before the final piecing, and I am not sure yet about the quilting, - it may be the subject of another 12" square yet.

It has been almost 2 years since I have done some of this work, and I now have some things I hadn't thought of before. This coming sunday I will be teaching a workshop for a few quilters who will be here from Buenos Aires for the weekend for a Rio Plate quilters meeting - no, I am not getting caught up in meetings retreats and projects with a group that is strongly focused on traditional north american styles of quiltmaking. I have talked with the Uruguayan quilters hoping to set them considering something that is more strongly related to their home country of Uruguay; but I don't think the seeds have taken root yet, it will be a while, if ever they do. The Argentines want to know how to do the freehand rotary cutting and piecing aka improvisational piecing. Preparing some samples for that has me thinking about this stuff again. Among other things, its very relaxing and therapeutic if nothing else .....

Yes, if I hadn't been on a wild goose chase to get a replacement drivers licence, I may never have seen this beautiful building now functioning as a cultural institute. Some of the architectural details brought parts of the movie "Lord Of The Rings" to mind. I'd love to see inside sometime, and might go back when I am in less of a hurry.

Way back last year sometime I misplaced my Uruguayand driver's licence. I think actually it was stolen when we had an intruder in the house last July; but since I don't drive a lot here I hadn't been too fussed. However, now the police are really tightening up (for which read, coming into line with other jurisdictions in other parts of the world, possibly) so last week I decided it was time to go through the bureaucratic maze and get a replacement. I asked one of my close Uruguayan friends to call the Intendencia (town hall or city council) which issues these things and find exactly what I needed to do, and particularly confirm what documentation I needed to take. Just the identity card now, she was told, no need to have made a police report of theft or loss - just go with the identity card. She re-checked, and checked the office hours, and so I arrived there about 9-30am - which I now realise for an office that opens at 8-30 is almost too late to be dealt with that day, The place was crowded. When I made it to the front of the first line, Information, I was told to go straight to sector 2. At sector 2, a fairly scary lady simply told me they had run out of numbers, (run out of numbers?) so I would have to come back the next day - but, of course, I also needed the police report I didn't yet have, anyway... so I should go back to Information. The information lady had another opportunity to practice english on me - she was very kind if a little stupid - and confirmed that yes, I certainly needed a police document - and at this stage with steam beginning to appear from my ears the person who seemed in charge of the whole chaotic department rushed over with the Duplicados form and said I could at least fill that out and pay the fee upstairs today, once I got my police document anyway, so that when I came back the next day I could indeed go straight to sector 2. By now rather stunned at how all this was not going, I thought it would make sense to get the necesssary police document from the nearest police sectional office, as there was bound to be one very close by, and with a bit of luck I'd have time to take all that upstairs and pay the fee before the office closed at 12-30. A uniformed police officer outside the intendencia said yes, the nearest was 'two blocks along and then left and you're right there', but the door man at the intendencia argued 'no, it's three blocks along and half a block down' . They tossed this back and forth and someone else intervened and said 'three blocks and a half'. I thanked them all in great confusion and struck out in the general direction they all agreed on, resolving to ask someone a bit closer - such as one of the people who run kiosks and little cafes who really know their neighbourhood ! A fairly longish walk three blocks along and three and a half blocks to the left took me past this building, and eventually brought me to Policial Seccional No. 2. I found myself in a clean bright, airy waiting room/office with shiny white and blue tiles half way up the walls that suggested it was hosed out occasionally, like a diary, somehow. (But, it was meticulously clean, and even sported a few live potted plants here and there) After a while a very nice policeman came in and said yes he could fix that - but, then the printer for the form seemed to be out of paper or not functioning for some other reason - so he picked up a piece of what I would describe as 1/4 page of hand-torn scratch paper, stamped it with a date stamp and the official Policia Seccional no.2 stamp, and proceded to write out in longhand that this was my application for a document to take to the Intendencia Municipal de Montevideo (IMM ) for the purpose of obtaining a replacement licence to drive a motor vehicle, stating my full name, ID number and address, and then signing it with his number and rank. I also signed it, thanked him and left, making it back to the treasury in time to pay the fee that day, and resolved to come back early the next morning for the licence itself.

The next day, arriving just on 9am, I was clearly late again - the line of maybe 150 people stretched back up the stairs from the licencing office, through the IMM lobby and almost out to the street. No wonder the Information lady said come back early, very early ... but I was grateful I had thought to bring a book. Thankfully the queue moved fairly steadily, and there at the top of the stairs was another scary lady directing people down to licensing or upstairs to pay first, according to how she assessed the paper work in their hands. She instructed me to go straight to sector 2 and obtain a number. The numbers were being hand allocated by the same scary lady as yesterday - I got #65, with #27 currently being served. I watched progress a while and estimated it would take a couple of hours, till 11am at least, probably - and retired to a bench with my book - looking up occasionally to see the numbers dawdle along. At 10-40, with still 6 numbers to go, I took myself to the loo, and hurried back to see that precisely one number had fallen in that time. It was 11-15 when #64 came up, but because there were people who had "11am appointments" waiting, I was kept standing aside, and it was actually 11-30 by the time I was seated at a desk in sector 2. It took 2-3 minutes to type in and have printed out the necessary information onto a card, which I then took to sector 3, photography, handed it straight in, and without any waiting had my photo taken. It took 10 minutes for my name to be called, and at last, 11-40am, I was walking out of there, still reeling from the impact of the whole experience, laminated replacement licence in hand. From where we live to this office is half an hour's travel time, so over the two days, add 2 hours' travel time, and 5 hours of various activities undertaken in pursuit of this licence (walking, liningup, waiting gazing, waiting reading, side conversations, and one bathroom stop) to give a total of at least 7 hours - SEVEN - to to get it. On the other hand, if I hadn't lost the original I may have never found myself walking to Policial Seccional No.2, and may not have looked up to see the beautiful building of which I took a photo - it was the brightest spot in that dreary time. My close friend V was most impressed, expressing admiration for how I managed to accomplish the whole manoeuvre! Montevideoans would rather do almost anything than have to go into the IMM maze overstaffed by scary, underworked bureaucrats who do very little, and do it very slowly. Quite a depressing, totally draining experience. They have the computers, the modern photographic equipment, but still maintain the same antiquated bureacratic systems which have not yet streamlined and modernised in any way, except that now there is no smoking in any of the crammed slow moving office and bank lines anywhere in the country. Talk about the dead hand of bureaucracy -I promise I will never, ever, complain about any Australian government office again.