Schavoir Faire                    June 3 – July 2, 2023

Curated by Jicky Schnee

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Artists: Alice Schavoir, Robin Schavoir

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"If I were to give this collection of work a central theme, it would be "layers upon layers"; of meaning, of lives, of memories, of stories, of paint and of stitches.  I tend to make autobiographical art or art that speaks to being a woman, blending humor with feminist and religious imagery. I come from a textile background, sewing since my early teens with the idea of becoming a fashion designer, but this evolved into soft sculpture and quilting shortly thereafter.  Until I went back to college at 40, I had considered painting to be my mother and brother's “territory”.  At school I found that I actually loved painting; it felt less utilitarian than sewing and my creativity flows differently through a brush than through a needle.  I love painting figurative images, but in this collection I chose to go into abstraction, inspired by my background in quilting ---yet on a deeper level, inspired by emotions and thoughts related to both the daily news and personal stress.  Border Lines and Trust Issues are maps of my brain, an imaging of memories layered and smashed into and against each other; the landscape of our lives very much shapes the wiring of our brains.  For the Limelette (leem-let) piece, named after a hamlet in Belgium, the layers are connected to my own memories and notions of early childhood, but on a grander scale, imagined memories of the land itself.  It was interesting for me to combine my decades-old love of sewing with my newer love of painting, being led by materials of fabric, paint, trash, hair, bones, or objects found on the street like an old butterfly or a broken gingivitis dental model, which in turn expanded use of materials and objects like clay, furniture, and toys, and pairing these with themes in my own life."

Alice Schavoir lives in Ulster Park with her husband, three children, and three stepchildren.  She paints and sews, and teaches sewing, at her studio in Poughkeepsie.