Nexus 2026: Full Schedule

Join us for our annual San Francisco/ Bay Area Black Art week from Wednesday September 30th - Sunday October 4th, 2026!

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11:00am PDT

Sunday October 4, 2026 11:00am - 5:00pm PDT

Ramekon O'Arwisters Studio @ 2747 19th St, San Francisco, CA 94110, USA

Please join me for a preview of my latest works and works-in-progress at my Open Studio.

Growing up in the Jim Crow South during the Civil Rights Movement, I had a safe haven—quilting with my Grandmother—where I was “embraced, important, and special.” These early memories prompted my nascent series of unique crocheted/ceramic sculptures titled Mending. Employing ordinary household or decorative pottery, broken and discarded, I combine traditional crafts into a dimensional woven tapestry, stripping both cloth and ceramic of their intended function.

In my new series of sculptures, Cheesecake, the works have transformed from something broken and needing mending to fully determined and self-aware. Being Black and Queer, the full complexity of the moniker “Cheesecake,” used to objectify an attractive, sexualized man or woman, is not lost to me. Instead I embrace it, subverting the demeaning implication in describing my objects. I develop sculptural hybrids by combining lacy, embellished fabrics with ceramics contributed by students and faculty from California State University at Long Beach.

Ramekon O’Arwisters is the 2021 recipient of the McLaughlin Foundation Award for The Project Space at Headlands Center for the Arts, Artist-in-Residence program and a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant for 2020/21. Past artist-in-residence programs include the de Young Museum Artist in Residence; The Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA; the Djerassi Resident Artists Program; Recology San Francisco Artist in Residence Program and the Vermont Studio Center. Grants and Awards include Artadia: The Fund for Art and Dialogue, NY; the San Francisco Foundation; the San Francisco Arts Commission Cultural Equity Initiatives Program; Black Artists Fund, Sacramento; and the Eureka Fellowship awarded by the Fleishhacker Foundation in San Francisco.

Museum exhibitions include the San Francisco Museum of Craft and Design, FIGHT AND FLIGHT: CRAFTING A BAY AREA LIFE; American Museum of Ceramic Art (AMOCA), Making in Between: Gender Identities in Clay (MIB:GIC); and San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles, Queer Threads. O’Arwisters is the founder of Crochet Jam, a community arts project infused with folk-art traditions that foster a creative culture in cooperative relationships. Born in Kernersville, North Carolina, O’Arwisters earned a M.Div. from Duke University Divinity School in 1986.

Artists

Ramekon O’Arwisters

Artist

Ramekon O’Arwisters abstract sculpture dives into the abyss and the beautiful. With large sharp ceramic shards knotted together using shredded fabric and black zip ties, the sculptures stand as cultural totems, embodying the couture of drag, Black culture, African American quilting and religion. Growing... Read More →

EDITED SLIDE OARWISTERS Patricia Sweetow cheesecake 8.1 jpg

Sunday October 4, 2026 11:00am - 5:00pm PDT
Ramekon O'Arwisters Studio

Open Studio

Website https://www.headlands.org/artist/ramekon-oarwisters/

Nexus 2026

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Nexus 2026

11:00am PDT

Ramekon O’Arwisters

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