When life gives you lemons, make pink lemonade.
In July 2025, the Philadelphia Inquirer published an article about Seymour Lemonick, a retired Philadelphia schoolteacher who taught himself woodcarving and sculpture and at the age of 90, had his first art show. I attended his exhibition at MidMod furniture gallery in Glenside, PA, and even purchased one of his pieces – a small wooden box. I was so inspired to see someone following their dreams at an age when many would say “it’s too late for that” or “why bother?”
Let’s step back just a bit further. In 2018, I received a life changing medical diagnosis. At the time, one of my symptoms was that I experienced tremors in my arms and hands every few minutes. Trying to do things that required fine motor skills became very challenging if not impossible, just attempting to brush my teeth was hard and very messy. Drawing and painting? Not possible (at least without serious trial, error, practice and modification).
This diagnosis leveled me. I feared watching myself slowly degenerate physically and mentally and ultimately succumb to the disease as I had watched happen to other family members, including my father. This was my biggest fear come to life.
After a few months my symptoms subsided, but I was so stressed and honestly, terrified to return to illustration, I decided to take up a new artform – crochet. It was both a relaxing outlet and also, I felt, more forgiving than the fine detail of painting that in the event my symptoms returned I would hopefully still have this creative outlet. However, I would always miss drawing.
After years of not maintaining my illustration practice, I became so disconnected from the artform that was my constant companion since childhood. I didn’t even know how I wanted to draw anymore or how I saw the world. I had lost my visual language, my artistic voice.
More trials and tribulations happened over the coming years, as they always do, and as the losses and hits kept coming, I got up again and again, and dusted myself off.
In 2025 began another hard year as the most important relationship in my life began to disintegrate. I was devastated and heartbroken.
I had been through so much in less than a decade; I faced my biggest fear and stitched myself back together mentally and emotionally over and over again. I needed something to hold onto over the coming long months as my life was thrown off its axis once more. I needed something to carry me though, something that was just for me, but also purely of me. I wanted to find my art, my voice, and I wanted to show my heart and soul to my community. I had been so vulnerable for so long, and hurt so much, I wanted to be seen.
Seeing Seymour Lemonick’s art show reminded me that art was always worth making and worth sharing.
I decided to have my own solo gallery show. No portfolio? I’ll make one. No gallery? No problem, I’ll host it myself. I knew that with regular practice and volume of work, I could find my way back to illustration and learn my new visual language. So for the past year I’ve dedicated myself to making art in all of the small moments I can find between the responsibilities of life, and carving out larger chunks at every opportunity.
The work I’ve created for Bejeweled & Bedeviled is the most personal I have ever made. Some of it is simply what makes me happy – sculptures depicting some of my favorite confections and fruits, and perhaps more use of the color pink than you would expect in an average art show. Other works represent some of the pain I’ve experienced over the last decade and the darkness that I’ve felt…but make it sparkly.
The enduring message of this exhibition? Don’t give up. Ever.
Fall down nine times, get up ten.
And when life gives you lemons, make pink lemonade.
– April
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