Logic [Creation] Intuition

🧡 Ramekon O’Arwisters: In Between

SFMOMA

Koret Education Center*

Ongoing — May 2027

Between logic and intuition lies a space of creation.

The first thing I encountered were the tricycles climbing up the wall. Unbelievably, there—in the middle (and safely out of my reach)—was the same model of trike I pedaled when I was five-years-old. I affectionately remembered how I would stroke the streamers on those handlebars. That three-wheeler meant everything to me, more than six decades ago. It was the very symbol of freedom. With it, I could do more than walk; I could fly.

That is the message that lies beneath this new presentation at the Koret Center. You, too, can fly.

In Between brings you into that world of possibilities through unexpected juxtapositions that invite creative reflection. Familiar objects are repositioned to make you curious. Thus, prompting questions about how creative thinking is sparked; how manipulating the objects within reach emerges as both an art-making and a healing practice, and simultaneously, how collaboration and improvisation become critical ways of knowing.

Throughout the space, everyday objects—silverware and sewing machines; musical instruments and tricycles—are celebrated both for the artistic skill of the people who made them and for their role as tools of play, craft, design and art. Removed from their usual associations, these objects prompt you to look again: to notice the space you’re standing in, to form your own meanings, and to find something new or unexpected in what you see.

With In Between, Ramekon O’Arwisters draws on his decades-long multidisciplinary practice in textile and craft to create a space that reflects his lived experience, his ways of finding inspiration, and his aim of finding calm, healing and resilience both within and through the unknown. What emerges is a sense that creativity is rarely solitary, that we create together rooted in different versions of shared experience, and that this shared creative presence is itself a way of knowing.

In His Own Words

What follows is Ramekon O’Arwisters Personal Statement encouraging visitors to join him

in creating, in a space he designed to inspire. Urging us to Do and not just Observe.

After World War II, my father returned to North Carolina to build two homes: one for his mother and one for his wife. I grew up in both.

Until I was college age, we harvested crops, farm animals, wild berries, fruit trees, wild game, and even earthworms right in the backyard. The land provided; we strived.

Sewing, quilting, mending, repurposing, and reusing were mandatory. At night, we sat and talked on the front porch until the small rag-fire we built to keep the mosquitoes away finally burned out.

On many school nights after dinner, with a wooden ruler, colored pencils, crayons, and magic markers, I drew and painted images that reflected a playful, peaceful inner reality, countering the harsh environment of growing up Black and Queer in the South in the 1960s and 1970s.

Through Creativity, I calmly expressed the unspoken, the unseen, the unresolved, and the "we'll see what tomorrow brings." I continued to draw and paint throughout college, divinity school, and life in Tokyo for five years. When I arrived in San Francisco, in 1991, the City embraced my Creativity and my sexuality; no need to hide, only create.

Rooted in the exploration of traditional textile and craft practices, my work as a multimedia artist reflects my experiences as a Black and Queer man in the United States. I ground my sculptural and socially engaged work in the understanding that craft—especially textile and fabric—[is] an act of care, healing and resilience. This belief traces back to my childhood and my grandmother, Celia Jones Taylor (1898–1982), who first taught me quilt-making as a safe space for creative expression.

In this space you are invited to join me in the in between.

*The Koret Education Center is ALWAYS FREE. There is no admission fee to SFMOMA required in order to enter or engage with the activities offered in this space.

For more information, click here.