PASSING ON A CHILDHOOD GIFT The popular community art event he hosts, the Crochet Jam, is rooted in cherished childhood memories steeped in the African-American tradition of weaving together in a calm, non-judgmental environment without rules or limitations. “My mother and grandmother expressed their worldviews and emotions through textile and fabric,” he remembers. His mother was a piecemeal textile worker at Hanes Knit, then located in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She worked long hours sewing sleeves onto t-shirts and taught O’Arwisters how to operate a sewing machine. “At a young age, I learned from her how to thread the machine, how to sew on a button, how to do single-stitch sewing, and other techniques,” he says. His grandmother was a quilt maker who crafted beautiful quilts for him and his siblings, including one they could take for their beds when they left for college. “She lived next door to us, and one day I visited her, and she was sitting on the bed, quilting. As I came into the bedroom, she turned toward me and said, ‘Boy, come over here and help me with this quilt.’” The last thing O’Arwisters wanted to do that day, he remembers, was some kind of craft project that would make him question his masculinity. “I was already at an age where I was becoming aware of my same-sex attraction,” he says. “Quilting and sewing had made me suspect, afraid, and withdrawn, and I contemplated all of this as I walked towards her. But expressing my displeasure with my grandmother’s request would have been a serious mistake.”
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