Former teacher is staging his first art exhibition — at age 90

Seymour Lemonick just accomplished something few 90-year-olds can dream of: staging his first art exhibition. For the retired Philadelphia teacher and football coach — a sculptor and self-taught woodworker whose Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, home is a makeshift museum — it’s a pinch-me moment. “This is beyond my wildest dreams,” Lemonick said of the exhibition that opened recently at MidMod Decor, a furniture and decor store in Wyncote, Pennsylvania.

Making art was something he felt drawn to do from a very young age, something that has long given him purpose and an outlet. Growing up in Olney and Oxford Circle, Lemonick painted at first, then, as a student at the University of Pennsylvania, fell in love with art history. After his Penn graduation, reality intruded. “I looked at the field and said, There are about four jobs available, and you’re not going to get one,’ so I took a different route,” Lemonick said. Less than a decade after he had earned a high school diploma from Olney High, Lemonick found himself back at the school as a history teacher.

In the early 1980s, he gravitated to Olney’s wood shop, where that teacher was a former patternmaker, a precise craftsman with a wealth of knowledge. Lemonick’s colleague was glad to show him around. The teacher there “taught me the basics of the lathe, and that’s where it started,” Lemonick said. Woodworking felt like a revelation, he said. First came the lathe, then, Lemonick began exploring free-form carving with found wood. He had a knack for it, and became an expert in wood, a more confident artist. Lemonick began showing some of his pieces — hand-carved bowls and vases — at craft fairs. He became a member of the Pennsylvania Guild of Craftsmen. After retiring from teaching in 1991, Lemonick threw himself into his art even more. His base of operations was in the garage of his Elkins Park home, a room so narrow and jammed that it’s difficult for two people to stand together. Inspired by the Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi and the English artists Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore, Lemonick’s work is modern and elegant.

“Sometimes, you start with an idea in mind; sometimes, the piece tells you what it wants to be,” he said. (One, a piece of dark wood jutting up straight from a square base, then curving around into a helix, with string pulled taut joining the curved section at points, was inspired by the cover of a fine-art magazine Lemonick was struck by as a Penn student. Seventy years later, Lemonick admits he ripped the cover off that magazine and kept it, turning a youthful idea into a mature work of art.) Lemonick is a thinker. He likes solving puzzles, and woodworking feels similar, he said. “It’s a technical problem. You really have to have a vision, to take this lump, create something that you envision,” he said. “That’s hard.”

While Lemonick did sell pieces at shows, and give some as gifts, the point of his work was never money or recognition, he said. Even when he was exhibiting at craft shows, Lemonick felt that his main job was discussing the work with people browsing. He’s not a salesperson. (When a friend who was a salesperson by trade worked Lemonick’s booth at one show, the friend handed Lemonick $1,200 at the end of the day, more money than Lemonick had ever pulled in himself — by a lot.)

An exhibition of his work never felt like a possibility, he said. But a series of coincidences conspired to make it happen. Lemonick, who was an active tennis player well into his 80s, fell and broke a hip last year, halting his ability to create art. During his recovery, social worker Susan Conner visited Lemonick and marveled at his house, crammed with his work and other modern art and furniture.

“It’s a museum,” said Susan Lemonick, his daughter.

Conner thought so, too. She and her sister, Lorrie Baranek, love shopping at MidMod Decor and became friendly with the owners, Barbara Schwab and her son, George Schwab. They approached the Schwabs with an idea: What if we made this happen for an undiscovered 90-year-old?

“Lorrie popped in one day and said, ‘I know this really great artist. He’s never shown his work before, and he’s from the area,’” George Schwab said.

Tribune News Service