About Studio C
A decorative arts studio in Seattle, founded by Cathy Conner in 1998.
The studio is the people.
Studio C is a small group of artisans working out of a studio on East Mercer Street. Plaster, decorative painting, murals, gilding, furniture and restoration, all of it mixed and made here. Most of our work comes through interior designers, architects and builders, in the Northwest and on projects across the country.
Between them, the people below have spent most of their working lives at this. That is the business. The rest is materials.
Meet the Artists
Cathy Conner
FounderCathy came to decorative painting from a career as a pastry chef, which is less of a leap than it sounds. Both are trades where you mix something, test it, and do it again until it behaves.
She trained in Paris in classical decorative painting and opened Studio C in 1998. Her own work runs from trompe l’oeil and chinoiserie through Venetian plaster and cement restoration, and she still mixes most of the samples that leave the studio.
Philippe Nalda
PlasterThree decades of decorative finish work in France and internationally. Philippe trained in traditional technique, woodgraining, faux marbre, glazes and ornamental work, and the materials pulled him toward plaster.
He runs most of the studio’s Veneziano, Marmorino and raked work, and mixes to match.
Virgilio “Martino” Martinez
Touch-Ups & RestorationMartino is a specialist in Italian plasters who has worked alongside some of the leading decorative painters in the United States.
Restoration is its own discipline, and matching a surface that has aged unevenly for decades takes longer to learn than making a new one. Color matching is the part he is known for. If a finish needs matching rather than making, it goes to Martino.
Michaele Miller
Decorative Painting and MuralsA BFA in painting and a career that began as an abstract painter in Boston, before Seattle in 1988. She has worked for the Seattle Aquarium, Nordstrom and Macy’s, and has painted with Studio C since the early nineties.
Murals, chinoiserie, grisaille and gilding. She keeps her own practice alongside the studio work.