Today we’d like to introduce you to Sonia Pal.
Hi Sonia, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I did not grow up, thinking of myself as a creative. Actually, until early 2020, I did even know what Calligraphy was.
My first career was in medicine and clinical research. Creativity arrived much later in November 2019 I wrote two things in a journal under a prompt asking me to make a list of new things I wanted to try:
Calligraphy.
Journaling.
I had no idea where either would lead.
A friend had signed me up for a local Calligraphy Class, but before I could take it, the class was canceled. Then the pandemic arrived. During that strange period of isolation, another friend encouraged me to try an online Calligraphy Academy.
So I did.
And that is probably the most accurate way to describe what happened next: I tried things.
I learned Calligraphy. I painted I discovered surface pattern design. I took Classes, made things, put some of them into the world and followed whatever made me curious.
There was no grand plan to turn any of it into a business.
ASquareWatermelon®️ grew from that experimentation and eventually became a multidisciplinary creative studio based in Raleigh area. Today, my work spans, original art and surface pattern design; traditional and modern calligraphy; and creative education, private creative experiences, and bespoke, collaborations and Brand activations.
Somewhere along the way, something else happened that I did not expect: the educator in me followed the artist into the studio.
Three years after I joined that online, Calligraphy Academy as a beginner, they invited me back to teach. I have since taught creative programming at local art centers, including North Carolina Museum of Art, and this year, the organization behind that canceled local class invited me to teach modern Calligraphy.
I love the full circle nature of that.
But I don’t think of my story as – follow your dreams and everything works out. Plenty of things did not work out.
I think it is a story about curiosity.
I kept learning, experimenting, and paying attention. Some became meaningful parts of my work. Others ended quickly. And some things that looked completely insignificant at the time turned out, years later, to have mattered enormously.
I am still building ASquareWatermelon® that way.
Curious enough to try. Attentive enough to notice. And willing to change direction when the evidence tells me to.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Oh, definitely not a smooth road.
I have done markets where I barely sold anything. I have approached retailers and heard no. I have launched ideas that went nowhere. I have tried opening e-commerce Storefronts on common platforms that accomplished very little besides teaching me that I did not want to be on those Storefronts. For years, my website, barely generated sales.
There have been classes with no students, opportunities that disappeared, money spent learning things I ultimately decided not to pursue, and plenty of ideas that seemed brilliant right up until reality got involved.
Earlier in the journey, I saw those experiences as failures.
I don’t anymore.
Now I see them as data.
That has probably been one of the most important parts of building ASquareWatermelon. If something doesn’t work, I want to know why. Was it the idea? the audience? the timing? environment? or did I discover that I simply do not want to build my business that way?
Because sometimes the right response to a dead end is not perseverance.
Sometimes you turn around.
The other challenge has been allowing myself to build a multidisciplinary creative practice without forcing every part of it into a tidy little box. I am an artist, a calligrapher, a surface pattern designer, and an educator. Those things once looked unrelated.
Overtime, I realized they are not separate identities competing for space. They are different expressions of the same curiosity and creative practice.
So yes, there have been plenty of wrong turns.
I just don’t consider a wrong turn wasted, if I came back knowing something I did not know before.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
ASquareWatermelon®️ is my multidisciplinary creative studio based in the Raleigh area built around craftsmanship education, storytelling, and meaningful human connection.
My work lives across three interconnected areas: Surface Design, Learn and Collaborate
As an artist and surface pattern designer, I create original artwork and pattern collections for applications including fine art prints, wallpaper, and fabric. I love the idea that art can move beyond the wall and become part of spaces and objects we live with.
As a Calligrapher and educator, I teach modern Calligraphy and other creative practices through local workshops, private creative experiences, and online education. I have also taught creative programming at local art centers and North Carolina Museum of Art.
My teaching philosophy is very much shaped by how I learned.
I was an adult beginner who did not think she was creative.
I remember what it feels like to look at beautiful lettering and have absolutely no idea how someone made that happen. So I don’t teach students simply to reproduce what I do. I want them to understand the foundations well enough that eventually they don’t need me standing beside them telling them what to do.
That philosophy has become Foundations That Stick™️, the educational methodology behind my teaching.
The Collaborate side of AsquareWatermelon®️ includes private creative experiences, and bespoke Brand activations for businesses and organizations from live engraving and personalized Calligraphy to custom creative experiences designed around a particular audience or event.
What connects all of it is something I care about deeply: creating work that feels thoughtful, tactile, and human.
And perhaps the people I have the greatest affection for are the ones who walk into a class and immediately announce:
“I am not creative.”
Excellent.
Come sit by me.
Because I used to believe exactly the same thing.
We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?
I am not sure I think of myself as a risk taker (at least anymore).
Looking back I realized long ago, I’m far too analytical for that.
My background in medicine and clinical research probably has something to do with it. I like information. I ask questions, I think about consequences. I am not particularly interested in throwing everything out at the table and hoping the universe rewards my courage.
But I am very comfortable experimenting without knowing the outcome.
Those are different things.
I can try one class.
Make one collection.
Learn one skill.
Say yes to one opportunity.
Put something small into the world and pay attention to what happens.
Then I have more information than I had before.
Some of those experiments have become meaningful parts of my life in business. Others have gone absolutely nowhere. Both are useful.
Starting a completely different chapter after an established professional career has also taught me that risk isn’t always dramatic line. Sometimes risk is agreeing to become a beginner again.
Sometimes it is making something you’re proud of and letting another person have an opinion about it.
Sometimes it is following a curiosity before you can justify where it will lead.
And sometimes the wiser decision is not to continue.
There are things that I protect very deliberately like my intellectual property, my creative energy, the integrity of my work and my ability to make thoughtful decisions about how ASquareWatermelon® grows.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.asquarewatermelon.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/asquarewatermelon/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100090185775721
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drsoniajpal/
- Other: https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/soniapal_creates/collections
