SPRING 2024 NEWSLETTER
Work made by a student who was accepted to multiple French Preparatory Courses, currently interviewing with the Beaux Arts de Paris Preparatory Year.
Still from watermusic, 2024, video projection on painting.
(click on the image above for the pdf / email version with images!)
Warm greetings to all of you from Paris.
Another intense application season is over, and we are thrilled to share some of our achievements and news.
We are so excited to report that our students had another stellar year, with every student accepted to their Early Decision/Action applications to BFA degree programs. Nearly all of our students who applied Early and others who applied Regular Decision received generous Merit awards based on the quality of their portfolios, ranging from $64,000 to $116,000 total awarded (over four years).
Our students were accepted to or received offers from US/Canada: Parsons, Pratt, SCAD, Otis, Drexel, RISD, USC, Concordia, MICA, BU, Tufts, Bard, Bennington College, SAIC, Marist, Toronto, Northeastern, Carnegie Mellon, Columbus College, California College of Art
UK/Ireland: Central St. Martins BA, London College of Fashion, Newcastle BA, Glasgow BA, Edinburgh, Loughborough, Kingston BA, Parsons Paris, UAL Foundation, AA Foundation, Bath, Camberwell BA, UCL BA Arch, Westminster BA Arch, UAL BA Arch, Brighton Foundation, Cambridge School of Visual and Performing Arts, University for the Creative Arts, St. Andrews, Leeds, Plymouth, Middlesex City and Guilds, Oxford Brookes
Europe: LISAA, Institut Francais de la Mode (IFM), Gaming Campus, NABA, Istituto Marangoni, ESMOD, Atelier de Sèvres, Prép’Art Paris, IE Business and Design
We continue to stress the advantage for students to apply early, something on everyone’s minds these days (NY Times Opinion Guest Essay). There is even more motivation when we see the clear correlation between merit-based awards offered for early applicants versus regular.
Other exciting news is that Maggie and I are producing an online course that will be available for purchase on our website. This course will guide students through how to best prepare a portfolio for applications to the US, UK, and many schools in the EU. It will provide an abridged version of our experience and expertise in addition to assignments and one portfolio review, at a more affordable price point than our custom packages. Students can also begin with the online course and then discount the equivalent amount from an individual package should they choose to engage in one. Keep an eye on our Instagram page for the launch of the course!
Our Process Portfolio describes Nina, a Paris-based student who applied to Interior Design programs in the US and UK.
In this newsletter, we will also be reminding you of other services we provide, and will introduce new artist-collaborators who will help make PortfolioWorks offerings broader and more supportive of a wide range of student needs.
Wishing you all peace and the space and time to work,
Allison and Maggie
PORTFOLIO PROCESS #8
Art training: IB Art_SL
University goals: Interior Design at Pratt, Parsons, UAL (Camberwell and CSM), or London Metropolitan University
Hours of Advising: Signed up for six hours, PW covered another six pro-bono, for total of 12.
Nina, aspiring to become an Interior Designer, approached us during the summer before her Senior year. As an IB art student, she typically adhered closely to class assignments, lacking the freedom to explore her ideas more boldly. We worked with her to help her understand how to make her work more personal, ambitious, critical, and sophisticated. We began by giving her experimental assignments and discussing them at length, after which she quickly moved on to more ambitious and personal project development.
Raised by Egyptian parents, she delved into family stories—her architect grandfather, activist grandmother, and the societal challenges faced by Egyptian women. Using her grandfather's floor plans, she imagined interventions resembling women's hands, disrupting space.
Boldly addressing clitoridectomies and societal issues, she created linoleum prints of clitoral organs.
She used photos of her grandfather’s buildings, cardboard and tape to create an abstracted portrait of him, a man she never knew.
Her projects also included large-scale sculptures and a shawl woven from diverse fabrics (see first image). In a staged photograph, she stood in solidarity with the obelisk on Place de la Concorde, feeling a kinship with its Egyptian history of displacement.
Finally, Nina created some bold drawings and collages of imagined, optical interiors to show her sensitivity to color and 2D image construction. Nina’s hard work paid off with admissions and scholarships from all the schools she applied to, ultimately choosing Parsons for her fall studies.
Services and new collaborators:
IB Visual Art Support with PortfolioWorks
We frequently encounter students that need support in their IB Art classes.The International Baccalaureate (IB) curriculum is quite specific and demands a thorough completion of various criteria to achieve high marks. In order to best guide our students, we have begun working with artists and educators who have significant experience in teaching or grading the IB.
Introducing Colin O'Con
Colin O’Con is an artist, musician and educator who lives and works in the Hudson Valley in NY. He joins us to assist with our East Coast students and specifically as an IB Art specialist for our students worldwide.
Colin has taught foundation courses at various institutions of higher education for 15 years and has served as an IB examiner for Visual Art Portfolios. .
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). Alongside his visual art practice, he plays in the bands Dark Carpet, Big High Hills and OCON.
Music coaching with PortfolioWorks
Applicants to musical arts programs are coached through the audition process with the following expert counseling:
Assessment of applicant’s strengths, musical voice, technical prowess, and practice goals
Guidance regarding school and program selection in USA, Europe, or UK
Assistance selecting exciting and functional repertoire as per the school requirements and student music voice
Creative instruction that addresses the specific individual needs of the applicant including musical interpretation, depth of sound, rhythmic precision, technical fluency, stylistic accuracy, creative approach and tailored practice guide
Coaching Guidance preparing and formatting video submissions
Introducing Dan Loomis
PortfolioWorks has begun collaborating with Dan Loomis- a skilled jazz musician, teacher and clinician who has worked for over ten years with students around the world, both as a private teacher and as a teacher at private schools in NYC.
Dan supports our students in their applications to music degree programs specializing in bass and jazz applicants.
Dan 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.
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.
Theatre and drama support with PortfolioWorks
Applicants to dramatic arts programs are coached through the audition process with the following expert counseling:
Assessment of applicant’s strengths, motivations, needs, and experience
Guidance regarding school and program selection in USA, Europe, or UK
Assistance selecting monologues as per the school requirements
Creative instruction that addresses the specific individual needs of the applicant including critiques, idea generation and development, working to identify a student’s unique personality and prepare for monologue and interviews
Coaching Guidance preparing and formatting video submissions
In this newsletter we are happy to introduce Yasmine Modestine.
Yasmine works with our theatre and singing candidates. She is an actor, a singer-songwriter and a playwright, trained at the Conservatoire National Supérieur d’Art Dramatique, (French National Drama School) in Paris. She has a 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. Yasmine gives drama workshops in English at La Sorbonne Nouvelle university, at ESCA drama superior school and teaches in Paris conservatories.
She writes songs and performs in France and abroad: in England, for the 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%).
She works in theatre with J.R Lemoine, Geneviève Mnich, Isabelle Hurtin, Stanilas Nordey, Patrick Pineau as well as in cinema, tv and radio. 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.
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While we are not experts on the nitty gritty of college admissions statistics, we do feel the shift in the weather. We also see the concrete results of our students who apply Early (Decision or Action). They are dramatically more likely to receive significant merit awards from the schools that tend to offer them. If a student receives an award during the Regular round, it tends to be a lower amount. We were interested in this opinion piece in the NY Times. Let us know your thoughts, we would love to hear from you!
Take good care, Maggie and Allison