Who we are
We are a team of dedicated creatives and educators who are here to help you make enormous strides in your art.
Founding Partners
Allison Blumenthal
Allison is an American/Italian visual artist living in Paris. Her practice encompasses drawing, sculpture, photographic work, and primarily, painting. Her work might be inspired by a variety of sources, from poetry and language, to pattern and careful observation of light and shadow, but is unified by a deep connection to the landscape. She uses her experience in and references to nature and the landscape as metaphor for thinking about human experience and questioning our anthropocentric hubris as a way to examine histories of human violence. She is represented by Parliament Gallery, Paris, and her work is in numerous private collections.
Originally from New York, she holds a DNA from the Beaux Arts de Lyon (The School of Fine Arts of Lyon, France), a MBA from Columbia University in NY, and a BA in Political Science from the University of Hawaii, in addition to coursework completed at the School of Visual Arts, NY, the International Center of Photography, and IDEP Barcelona. Prior to devoting her career to art and art education, she worked for numerous years in charter school administration in the New York City area.
Maggie Cardelús
Maggie is a Paris-based, American/Spanish artist and designer. Her work, comprised of wall pieces, sculpture, installations, performance, and video, has relied heavily on meticulous handcraft and a range of media to test and push the limits of personal or amateur photographs as uniquely complex image-objects and psychological and relational power nodes. Recent work has explored the layered histories of embroidery and printmaking, leading to a new body of work using mesh and paint. She works with F2 (Madrid), and Galleria Nilufar (Milano), and her work is in numerous public and private collections.
After serving on the faculty at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Santagiulia (2008-2012) in Brescia, she moved to Paris in 2012, where she taught Drawing Concepts within the Media, Art, Technology department at the Parsons Paris New School. Maggie shifted away from the classroom in 2019 to focus on one-on-one teaching and portfolio development.
Maggie also works periodically by invitation with fashion and design firms. A number of design projects made in collaboration with the French fashion maison Sonia Rykiel led her to discover leather and has expanded her art practice to include small collections of one-of-a-kind, highly crafted, leather and cast bronze or gold NeckPieces, now carried by Galleria Nilufar.
Maggie holds a BA in studio art and art history from Wellesley College, a Masters in Architecture from the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, and an MFA from Hunter College in NY. She is the recipient of numerous art and design prizes/grants and has pursued her passion for vernacular handcraft in artist residencies in France, Japan, Malaysia, India, and South Africa.
Specialist Team
Rami Baglio
Rami is an American artist who lives and works in New York City and Florence Massachusetts. She works in oil paint and assorted drawing media, exploring various forms of self-portraiture and observational drawing and painting. Observing and working from life as a means of understanding light, form, and movement are integral to her work. This becomes an access point to investigating the psychology of given subject matter, whether people, objects, spaces, or abstract thoughts and ideas. She is the recipient of numerous awards in the arts, and exhibits her work internationally.
Rami has a comprehensive background in figure drawing and painting. She spent years studying classical drawing and painting with Studio Escalier, The New York Academy of Art, Florence Academy, The Ryder Studio, and the Art Students League of New York. She holds an MFA from The New York Academy of Art, where she is currently a faculty member and instructor, and a BA in studio art from Hampshire College.
Colin O’Con
Colin (b. Natchitoches, LA) is a visual artist, musician, and educator. His work presents viewers with the mystery of nature through paintings, sculptures, and immersive installations. Referencing both traditional landscape painting and subliminal abstraction his works oscillate between representations of the known and unknown in experiential natural phenomenon. O’Con earned an MFA from Hunter College, New York with the Tony Smith Sculpture Award and a BFA cum laude from the University of North Texas. His work has been included in exhibitions at Half Gallery (New York, NY), Marathon Gallery (Ellenville, NY), Fresh Window (Brooklyn, NY), Rawson Gallery (New York, NY), Lesley Heller Workspace (New York, NY), The Alexandria Museum of Art (Alexandria, LA), Boston Center for the Arts (Boston, MA), Artspace (San Antonio, TX), and CSAW (Houston, TX).
As an educator, Colin has taught foundation courses at various institutions of higher education for 15 years and serves as an IB examiner for Visual Art portfolios. Alongside his visual art practice, he plays in the bands Dark Carpet, Big High Hills and OCON. He lives and works in the Hudson Valley, NY.
Farah Khelil
Farah Khelil (1980), studied at the Higher Institute of Fine Arts in Tunis and holds a doctorate in arts and art sciences from the School of Arts at the Sorbonne Paris 1. She has taught since 2010 at the School of Arts of the Sorbonne, Paris, at the University of Paris 8 Vincennes, as well as at the Strate School of Design. Today she teaches at the Ecole Supérieure d'Art de Lorraine in Metz.
Her work draws on intimacy and philosophical thought, combines artist's books, painting, photography, video, drawings and installations. She questions our relationship to the image, to the exhibition, to language and to history. Since 2006, some selected exhibitions include the Fiminco Foundation, LAAC (Dunkerque), Cité des Arts (Paris), Pernod Ricard Foundation (Paris), the National Museum of Archeology of Umbria (Italy), L'ahah (Paris), Le Cube (Rabat), Transmitter (New York), HandelStreet Projects (London), the Venice Biennale (Italy), Manart AlSaadiyat Cultural Center (Abu Dhabi), Le Center Culturel de Cerisy (Normandy).
Nominated for the 2019 AWARE Prize, she has also been the recipient of grants from the ArabFund for Arts and Culture, the Goethe-Institut Tunis and the CAORC-CEMAT research grant.
She has work in the collections of the British Museum, FRAC Poitou-Charentes, FRAC Normandie, Center for Artists' Books (Limousin) and the Paris Collections Contemporary Art Fund.
Clarence Tokley
Clarence is a Paris-based teacher, filmmaker, and producer. A native of New Jersey, Clarence attended Rutgers University, obtaining a degree in History and Film Studies. His work incorporates a wide range of styles and techniques that mirror his varied course of study in acting. He has studied acting in Philadelphia, New York and Paris. His approach incorporates the techniques of Strasberg, Meisner, Hagen, Stanislavski, Viewpoints and others. Clarence believes that an actor must find the right tools to place in their tool kit to achieve the truthfulness and presence needed to connect to their work, partners and audience. He tailor fits his approach to each individual and their strengths and needs. His work reflects his collaborative spirit and focus on body, voice, face and movement, helping the actor achieve the balance to keep their instrument prepared and open to being present and oneself.
When he's not teaching, Clarence continues to work professionally in film and theatre production in and around Paris. He’s co-founder of the theatre company The Big Funk Company and worked and produced a number of award winning projects and short films. He has a strong love for creating, collaboration, and helping students achieve their dreams and goals. Clarence wishes to continue exploring his craft and growing as an artist, person and educator.
Cheryl Wing-Zi Wong
Cheryl Wing-Zi Wong is a New York-based artist working at the boundary of art and architecture. Cheryl’s work investigates the transformation of shared space over time. She explores how spaces can perform on varying scales, ranging from smaller scales such as shelters and surfaces that accommodate the body, to larger spaces that extend their reach to entire environments. Cheryl’s creative process is a crossover between digital drawing (using tools such as mapping, architectural drafting software and 3D modeling), visual experiments and site-specific construction of spaces.
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Cheryl received her B.A. in Art and Italian at the University of California at Berkeley, studied sculpture at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera (Milan, Italy) and earned her Master of Architecture from Columbia University GSAPP. Cheryl has lived and worked in Milan, Hong Kong, Berlin, New York, Berkeley, Macau and Bangkok. Cheryl’s work has been commissioned by the New York State Thruway Authority, New York City Parks Department, City of Inglewood, City of Calgary and by the Washington DC Government – Percent for Art program. She has been a visiting critic at Columbia University and the Parsons School of Design and a professor at the International Program in Design & Architecture (INDA) at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand. She is a co-founding partner of design practice WITH WITH.
Yasmine Modestine
Yasmine Modestine is an actor, a singer-songwriter and a playwright, trained at the Conservatoire National Supérieur d’Art Dramatique, (French Premier Drama School) in Paris. She has Master in Arts and Medias, option Theatre: writing and representation, from La Sorbonne Nouvelle, and a degree in English literature from Descartes University in Paris.
She works in theatre with J.R Lemoine, Geneviève Mnich, Isabelle Hurtin, Stanilas Nordey, Patrick Pineau… in the cinema, tv, radio…
She writes songs and performs in France and abroad: in England, for 40th anniversary of Francophonie in South Korea… She produced for France Culture (Radio France) Métis, nous sommes des 200%, deux sangs pour sang (Mixed Race, We Are 200%).
Her plays are published at Les Editions Le Solitaire. Her first play, Le Prince Charmant, was read at Le Théâtre de la Tempête, at the Drama Authors and Composers Society (SACD) and at the Théâtre 13. Mademoiselle, her second play, has been selected by the Bureau des Auteurs of La Comédie Française and was read in Paris by La Compagnie Des Mots et des Actes. She published Quel dommage que tu ne sois pas plus noire (What a Pity You Are Not Blacker) (Max Milo, 2015) et Noires mais blanches, blanches mais noires : les figures féminines noires ou métisses au théâtre de Cléopâtre à Ourika (Blacks but White, Whites but Black : Black or Mixed Race Female Figures in the Theatre from Cleopatra to Ourika) (L’Harmattan, 2020). Her latest play Au-dessus de la cime des arbres (Above the Tree Tops) was read at the Théâtre du Rond-Point (Paris) and Théâtre de l’Odéon (Paris) in 2023.
In 2020 and 2023, she was in residency at the Writing Drama Centre at La Chartreuse in Villeneuve-lez-Avignon. In 2022, she was selected by Paris City Hall for a residency in Madrid.
She gives drama workshops in English at La Sorbonne Nouvelle university, at ESCA drama superior school and teaches in Paris conservatories.
Dan Loomis
Dan Loomis is a skilled jazz musician, teacher and clinician, having spent more than a decade working with students around the world. He is a daring leader, sideman, and composer whose view of the world – and willingness to explore his own inner questioning – has led to the creation of innovative and moving works.
Loomis has appeared on nearly a dozen recordings with the Dan Loomis Quartet and with bands he co- leads, including the collectives The Wee Trio and SPOKE. The latter two bands have released critically acclaimed albums in recent years, including SPOKE’s (R)anthems in 2014, and The Wee Trio’s Wee 3 in 2017.
In addition to his work on the bass, he has written several commissioned pieces, including a jazz oratorio based on the Book of Job and another based on the final days of Jesus, both commissioned by St. Peter’s Church in New York. He recently formed the ensemble REVOLUTIONS that uses its music to explore the Haitian and Bolivarian uprisings, and to comment on the world’s continuing need for a revolution of spirit and action.
Loomis is a regular member of Vadim Neselovskyi’s trio, which has played across Europe and at the Blue Note and Village Vanguard in NYC. A small sample of the no- table names with whom Loomis has performed includes TS Monk, Gary Burton, Wycliffe Gordon, Ernesto Cervini, Joel Frahm, Laurence Hobgood, and The Respect Sextet. He’s played in all of New York’s major clubs and at Jazz at Lincoln Center, in addition to appearing on stages across Europe, Canada, Australia, China and throughout the United States.
Olivia Booth
Olivia Booth has been making art and teaching in Los Angeles since moving from New York City over 20 years ago. Her art practice plays the spectrum between transparency and opacity, and she’s particularly focused on how glass frames individual and collective self-reflection. She is a recent recipient of the COLA-IMAP Grant 2024 from the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs and the Hopper Prize. She has exhibited at the Neutra VDL House, Monte Vista Projects and Irenic Projects, LA, UrbanGlass in Brooklyn, Goldfinch Gallery in Chicago, and Pilchuck Gallery in Seattle. Her work has also been shown at non-profit spaces like Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, SculptureCenter, The Finley Gallery and The Schindler House, and has been written about in Art Forum and the New York Times. She dedicates a major portion of her life to teaching college art classes, drawing in particular. She holds an MFA from Art Center College of Design and a BFA and BA from Cornell University.
Jill Spector
Jill Spector is an artist and art worker whose practice encompasses artmaking, performance, design, teaching, consulting, and collaboration. Her background blends performance and sculpture, crossing disciplinary boundaries, and is the foundation for her consultancy, In Favor Of. Recent collaborations include costumes for Emily Mast’s performance IFIF at Arta Sperto in Geneva, pedestal gowns for Bari Ziperstein’s installation Variations on a Sample at LAMAG , and Love Flags with Alexandra Grant for feMMMes: a happening at LA State Historic Park. Spector’s sculptures and collages were part of Made in L.A. 2012 at the Hammer Museum. Her work has been included in the exhibitions Biomorphic Forms In Sculpture at the Kunsthaus Graz and Drawling, Stretching and Fainting in Coils…, an exhibition organized by artist Diana Thater, at the Pinakothek der Moderne and Nationaltheater in Munich, Germany. Jill Spector’s photography has been featured in publications including Valeria Napoleone’s Catalog of Exquisite Recipes, and SchindlerLab.org published by the MAK Center. Following this project, Spector created The Editor’s President: Models and Mock-Ups for Elaine May, Nora Kaye, and Eileen Gray, an installation at JOAN in Los Angeles. Jill Spector and artist Bret Nicely founded TARP, a series of performances and installations in and around their empty swimming pool in Altadena, California. Spector also formed Designing Women, a conversation series by women who own and operate businesses in art and design.
In 2021, Jill Spector and artist Julie Weitz co-founded Tzitzit Project - a community-based initiative focused on expanding Jewish spiritual practice via an inclusive design approach to a traditional ritual garment—the tallit katan, nourishing queer, trans, and feminist reclamations of the wearing of tzitzit that honor a wide variety of bodies, gender identities, and self-expressions within diverse Jewish communities.
Jill Spector was named one of the Orange County Contemporary Collectors 2013 Fellowship Artists and in 2019 awarded an Inquiry Fellowship from American Jewish University, Los Angeles, CA. Her works are included in the Zabludowicz Collection, London, the Kunsthaus Graz, and The Museum of Modern Art. Jill is an alumna of the Syracuse University School of Visual and Performing Arts (BFA 1998) and the Graduate Art Program at Art Center College of Design (MFA 2005).
Jill Spector is the coordinator for Syracuse University’s Turner Semester Residency Program in Los Angeles, a career development fellowship designed specifically for MFA Graduate Students to develop and employ essential professional practices in the arts.