“PMAC is a great place for family.” Ilianna Rossetti says it simply, but the meaning runs deep. Her family’s connection to art spans generations, stemming from her grandmother, Alexandra, who was a gifted artist and craftsperson. “She painted winter scenes and flowers, made dolls’ clothes, sewed our dresses, and even canned and baked,” Ilianna remembers. “Everything she touched was beautiful.”
That creativity was passed to Ilianna’s mother, Joy Paschalidis; then Ilianna; and now to Ilianna’s young daughters, Xenia and Anika. Today, three generations are part of the PMAC community.
Xenia, age 10, takes private voice lessons and visual art classes at PMAC. Following in her family’s artistic footsteps makes Xenia feel like part of something. “I think it’s cool,” she declares, “because my great-grandma did art, and then my grandma did art. My mom does art. Right now, I’m doing it.”
And while she loves being part of that chain, for Xenia, art is mostly just fun. She lights up when talking about how she looks forward to coming to PMAC: “Yay! I’m so excited! I get to do art and music this week!”
But that excitement doesn’t mean everything comes easily. Frustration bubbles up when her artwork doesn’t go as planned. “A lot of times I’m like, I don’t like this at all. Oh, no, this isn’t good enough,” Xenia explains. But at PMAC, she’s learning to trust the creative process and work through challenges.
PMAC teaching artist Sophie Rahilly is helping Xenia see that mistakes can lead to possibilities. “Sophie taught me if you make something that you don’t like, you could turn it into something else,” Xenia says. “Even if my artwork isn’t good, I still turn it into something amazing.”
That growth mindset is starting to show up in Xenia’s music, too. “When I did my first piano recital,” she remembers, “I was like, Oh, no, I’m gonna fail this. And then the next couple times I was like, Oh, yeah, I got this. I’m doing it. I’m going to do great.”
Others are noticing the mental shift, too. Her grandmother, Joy, clearly sees the personal growth: “I think Xenia’s more confident at PMAC. She’s not as shy as she used to be.” Ilianna echoes the sentiment about her children, sharing, “It’s amazing to watch them grow and to see their confidence build. Their confidence carries on from PMAC into their school days. When once they might not have been so excited in the morning, now they’ve got their head held high.”
For Joy, her connection to PMAC isn’t just through her granddaughter. She’s also become a PMAC student herself, taking Creative Aging classes like collage and monoprinting. “When I come here, it’s like I unload,” Joy reflects. “It’s a time where I can sit down, relax and try to be creative and use colors to spark the imagination. I always look forward to it. I’m always thinking Art is coming. Art is coming.”
Interacting with other art students is a key part of Joy’s experience. “Everybody is so creative, my goodness,” she marvels. “Everybody is interesting and everybody’s art is different; we all have these different ideas going. People are very kind and sociable and everybody shares. It’s stimulating.”
Watching her mother reconnect with creativity has reminded Ilianna how often we lose touch with our playful selves as adults. “A lot of times as we get older,” she observes, “we are just so caught up in the busyness of life that we forget to have fun and we get separated from the creativity that we had growing up as children.”
As a functional nutritionist, Ilianna spends a lot of time thinking about wellness and sees that disconnection as a health issue. “I’ll ask patients, What do you do for fun? And I’d say 95% of the time most people say I don’t know what I do for fun.” She believes that creative expression can be a powerful way to restore that missing joy. “Being able to reconnect with ourselves and creativity,” she adds, “I find it so important for long term health.”
For all three generations, making art at PMAC is about more than creativity—it’s about connection: to themselves, to each other, and to something bigger. Family. Care. Purpose. Belonging.
