lexaDOOz

People say, “It is what it is.”

I’ve never connected with that phrase.

My mother spent my entire childhood telling me that the world was my canvas and that I could use my paintbrush to create it however I wished. So when people tell me, “It is what it is,” all I hear is permission to accept things exactly as they are.

I don’t believe that.

Reality is negotiable. If you don’t like your circumstances, change them.

You can repaint them. You can rebuild them. You can create something entirely new.

That’s why “It Is What It ISN’T” is tattooed on me. It’s a reminder that the world only becomes fixed when we decide to stop imagining something different and actually do it.

••••••••

Lexi Martone is an artist, storyteller, television personality, and professional collector of beautiful disasters.

Before the television shows, before the social media following, before the celebrity clients, before any of it, Lexi was an artist.

From the very beginning, her path was defined by curiosity and experimentation. She has spent her entire life exploring every creative medium she could get her hands on. Drawing, painting, sculpture, fashion design, food, photo, videos, nails, storytelling, and now immersive art experiences. Art was never the question.
The medium was.

The witch inside was also quietly manifesting her future. As a little girl, camera in hand, filming her sister at dance competitions, Lexi would tell people that one day she was going to have a television show about her family. Long before it became reality, she saw it first.

As she grew older, that vision began to take form through fashion, but the industry made it clear that talent wasn’t always enough. As a plus size woman, she was constantly told no because of the way she looked. Faced with those limitations, she pivoted. She found a new canvas in nail art, where she could paint tiny masterpieces and build a career around creativity instead of fitting into someone else’s mold.

She quickly learned that judgment exists everywhere. The beauty industry wasn’t much different. Her talent still wasn’t enough.

So instead of changing her art, she changed her life.


After the gastric sleeve surgery, losing 150lbs and a gallbladder, she stepped into a new chapter.

Lexi went on to become one of the most recognized nail artists in the world. Her work appeared on celebrities including JLo, Katie Holmes, Sophia Bush, Jada Pinkett Smith, and Victoria’s Secret Angels. She worked with some of the biggest brands in the beauty industry including Valentino Beauty Pure, Young Nails, OPI, and Color Club, while collaborating with brands such as Nickelodeon and Marvel.

At the height of her career, she wasn’t just participating in the nail industry she was helping shape it. She headlined trade shows, educated artists around the world, created trend setting designs, and built a reputation that reached far beyond her Long Island salon. Clients traveled from across the country to sit in her chair.

She would go on to appear on Food Network and MasterChef, proving once again that creativity isn’t confined to a single medium. Then came the television show she had been manifesting since childhood.

TLC’s Unpolished introduced the world to the Martone family and transformed Lexi from an industry leader into a household name. The series aired internationally, reaching audiences across the United States, Canada, Latin America, UK and beyond. What started with a little girl holding a camera at dance competitions became a reality watched by millions.

For a moment, it felt like she had figured it all out.

But that sense of resolution didn’t last.

There was STILL was always another reason she was told no. Not enough experience. Not enough connections. Not enough money. Not enough story.

Then life handed her a story she never would have chosen for herself… or so she thought..

The world shut down, her salon closed, she lost her father, she went through a breakup that almost destroyed her. Years of chronic illness met Lyme Disease which led to liver failure, a liver transplant, and 4 days in a coma. All under the public eye. The whole world had an opinion of her healing journey, just as they had about how she grieved her fathers death and heartbreak.



These experiences, though painful, became turning points. The things she spent years trying to avoid became the very things that shaped her work.

Grief became the next medium.

Now, those chapters form everything she creates. Today, Lexi creates paintings, sculptures, miniatures, immersive experiences, and strange little worlds that live somewhere between childhood wonder and cemetery gates. Her work blends dark humor, nostalgia, grief, resilience, and the belief that even the darkest stories deserve color.

Her art is no longer just about expression. It’s about transformation.

Because healing doesn’t always look like healing. Sometimes it looks like laughter at a gravesite. Sometimes it looks like a painting. Sometimes it looks like a tiny sculpture, a story, a joke or a spark of color where nobody expected to find one.

Today, Lexi’s mission is simple:
Help people heal through creativity.
To prove that grief and joy can exist in the same room.
To show people that pain can become purpose.
And to remind anyone who has ever been told “it is what it is” that reality is far more flexible than they’ve been taught to believe.

Life told her no a lot.
She changed it anyway.
Created a world that no one can ever destroy because she built and protects it with her own two hands.

The magic was never in the circumstances.
The magic was always inside her.
The magic is inside of everyone. Just look.