Paul Taswell

And my mother, you know, I was always, you know, right at her side.

You know, as she would draw and paint or early on in my life, she was making puppets and doing puppet shows with her sister and with my older cousins.

They would create these puppet shows for libraries in and around Akron for the schools and for the church.

And so I was really fully connected and engaged with what they were doing and that kind of crafting.

And so in some way, that fed into my desire to create, to work with my hands.

I think that creating clothing was just the next step.

My mother had a Singer sewing machine, and she would set it up, and she would make costumes and clothing for us, my brothers and myself.

Also, she was making things for herself.

And then, you know, it was just a skill that I wanted to have so that I could start to create things for myself.

So I would make dashikis and different kinds of clothing, you know, shorts and, you know, it's just a way of, you know, it was an activity.

We were definitely surrounded within my family.

I mean, my grandmother was a painter.

My dad, you know, also, he loved model trains.

So I remember for a period of time, he had this huge model train table that, you know, where you would have little, you know, model houses.

You'd create a little town and the train would ride around it.

And then, you know, there was the element of live production.

I mean, they would take us to productions of musicals, you know, that were in the Akron and Cleveland area.

They encouraged us to join the drama club, and my brothers and myself, we were all Suzuki violin or cello students.

So culture was really big.

My grandmother had studied at Oberlin Music, and she was a piano teacher and piano player.