Meet the people behind The 222

Paul Mahder brings strong leadership with experience as a professional artist, businessman, entrepreneur and humanitarian.

Artist – 25 years as a fine-art photographer with exhibits in NY, Paris, Chicago, San Francisco, St. Louis and more.

Businessman/entrepreneur – Successfully conceived, built and launched the Blue Room Gallery and the Paul Mahder Gallery in San Francisco. In 2014, he opened the largest gallery north of Los Angeles, the Paul Mahder Gallery, in Healdsburg, California.

Paul has curated over 150 exhibits, including painting, sculpture, photography, art furniture, high-tech art and more. He has worked with hundreds of local and international artists on numerous U.S. premieres. Currently, he represents over 40 established and emerging artists. Full exhibitions are curated and presented every 8 weeks.

Humanitarian – Paul has successfully promoted and integrated many educational programs and exhibitions at the Blue Room Gallery and the Paul Mahder Gallery to help the local community. Those served include the developmentally disabled, young children, the deaf, and the homeless. He has also organized educational programs and seminars for artists, art buyers and the general public.

Erin Partridge, PhD, ATR-BC® is an artist and a board certified, registered art therapist℠. She is also a certified forest therapy guide. She grew up on a ranch in the East Bay Area, has lived all over California and spent some time in New York for graduate school. Her clinical experience includes work in community, pediatric, forensic, and geriatric settings and she is published in the areas of art therapy, elder care, research methods, and technology. Her research interests incorporate the lived experience and focus on participatory, ethnographic, and art-based approaches. Erin teaches at several universities and facilitates workshops in community and educational settings. Her creative process and creative output fluctuates between being intuitive and methodical. Curiosity is her guiding principle, both in art as well as in relation to others. The 222 is an exciting sandbox to explore the opportunities for authentic connection through and with the arts. She is currently conducting a qualitative research study about why spaces like THE 222 matter.

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Courtney Jansen moved to Santa Rosa in 2017 and rediscovered her love of dance after a decade-long hiatus. Through MovementLab and the dance program at Santa Rosa Junior College, she found a vibrant community that quickly became home.

Since then, Courtney has become deeply immersed in the Sonoma County dance community. From 2022 to 2024, she danced with and choreographed for Santa Rosa Junior College's pre-professional traveling company, expanding her voice as both performer and maker. In 2022, she met Tanya Kinnipilmer and began training with UPside Dance Company, where she continues to perform as a company member, grounded in curiosity, collaboration, and growth.

In 2024, Courtney became both a member and teacher with the Healdsburg Dance Collective, sharing her passion for movement and cultivating connection through dance. The following year, she made her debut with Kristen Daley’s dance collective, PlayGround. She is honored to dance alongside a vibrant community of movers and groovers and to share their artistry with the Healdsburg community in her role as Dance Coordinator at The 222.

Aldo Billingslea is the Father William J. Rewak S. J., Professor of Theatre Arts at Santa Clara University. He holds a B.A. in English and Communication Arts and an M.A. in Secondary Education from Austin College in Sherman, Texas. He earned his M.F.A. in Acting at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. A member of Actor’s Equity Association and the Screen Actor’s Guild, Billingslea has appeared in numerous theatrical productions in the San Francisco Bay Area and across the United States, including the works of Lorraine Hansberry, Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Oscar Wilde, Lillian Helman, Thornton Wilder, Marcus Gardley and August Wilson.

Caroline Altman, soprano, is an award-winning performer with experience working in opera, musical theater and cabaret on many international stages including the United States, Switzerland, England, Italy, and Germany. Notable roles include Albert Herring (Lady Billows) with Pocket Opera, Three Sisters Who Are Not Sisters (Mary) with Oakland Opera, Follies (Stella/Heidi) at San Francisco Playhouse, Ruthless! (Judy/Ginger) with California Cabaret Theater, The Light in the Piazza (Signora Naccarelli) and Sweeney Todd (Bird Lady) with Theatrewoks in California in addition to numerous leading roles with San Francisco’s 42nd Street Moon including Carmelina, Louisiana Purchase, The Golden Apple and Fanny. Additional credits include roles with California Shakespeare Theatre, Woodminster Summer Musicals, San Diego Comic Opera, and Playhouse West (Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle Award for Whispers on the Wind.)
Ms. Altman has toured the United States and Europe as a vocalist with extended contracts in Switzerland, New York, and London, and also works as a stage director, choreographer and composer.
She received her degree in vocal performance from University of California, San Diego, teaches voice and drama, is the founding artistic director of Lyricabella Studios, and director of education at San Francisco Opera Guild. Caroline has composed six musicals, one opera, and two books including, Indy at the Opera: A Kitty Traviata. When seasonally appropriate you can find Caroline kicking up her heels as a tap dancing Christmas Tree; she has danced in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade twice in the last 10 years.

Denise Low, Ph.D. was Kansas Poet Laureate 2007-09. She won a Red Mountain Press award for Shadow Light: Poems. Other publications are The Turtle’s Beating Heart: One Family’s Story of Lenape Survival (U. of Nebraska Press) and Jigsaw Puzzling: Essays (Meadowlark Press). At Haskell Indian Nations University she founded the creative writing program. She edited Kansas Poems of William Stafford; Essays (Woodley). Board memberships include Indigenous Nations Poets (In-Na-Po) and Associated Writers and Writing Programs (2009-14). She has Lenape/Munsee (Delaware) Indigenous heritage.

Sanford Dole is Artistic Director of Cantabile Chorale, a 50-voice community choir based in Palo Alto, and Music Director of St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in San Francisco. He is also a member of Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra’s all-professional Chorale.

Active in the Bay Area as a conductor, singer and composer for his entire adult life, Sanford has performed with, and had his compositions performed by, many of the area’s leading ensembles. He was a member of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus for 23 seasons, and was that group’s Assistant Director from 1987-1997. A founding member of the male vocal ensemble, Chanticleer, his arrangements have often been performed by the renowned 12-man chorus as well as his commissioned work, I Am With You, set to a poem by Walt Whitman.

Mr. Dole received his Bachelor and Masters degrees in composition and conducting, respectively, from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. His conducting credits include such major works as Handel’s Messiah, and Bach’s B Minor Mass and St. Matthew Passion, as well as many other choral and chamber ensemble concerts.

Jessica Felix has contributed a great deal to the world of jazz with the successful and thriving Healdsburg Jazz Festival which she founded in 1999 and was artistic direction until her retirement in 2020. Her dream of helping to create a jazz festival in Healdsburg became a reality in June of 1999, with the success of the first annual Healdsburg Jazz Festival, which featured Cedar Walton, Billy Higgins and Bobby Hutcherson. Many more fantastic musicians have followed: Pharoah Sanders, Randy Weston, Charles Lloyd, Jackie McLean, Charlie Haden, Abbey Lincoln, Renee Rosnes and others. HERE is a list of her 20-year programming history.

She began her musical activism years ago, with a nonprofit enterprise created in Oakland named “Jazz in Flight.” This led to a series of home concerts that continued for ten years, including an annual New Year’s Eve concert featured many world-famous musicians. Jessica created and produced the first five Eddie Moore Jazz Festivals at Yoshi’s Nightspot, which turned into seven-day major jazz events with musicians from all over the country and abroad. Throughout, her house was always home to traveling musicians and still is. Jessica is devoted to educating the public about jazz and helping to keep the musical art-form alive.

Many people do not know that she is also a gifted jewelry designer and has had a parallel career beginning in the early 80’s. Her spirited designs have been shown in high end art galleries across the country. When she first moved to Healdsburg in 1994, she opened the gallery “Art and All That Jazz,” showcasing her creations and also playing and selling an eclectic collection of her favorite jazz and Brazilian CD’s. You can see her work at www.artandallthatjazz.com, on Etsy, and by appointment in her Healdsburg studio. Get on her mailing list to hear about special shows.

Violinist and arts administrator Gary McLaughlin has enjoyed a long career in music, performing with several major American orchestras, as well as chamber ensembles, on both coasts and in the Midwest.

Gary was music director and conductor of the Oregon Coast Music Festival for ten years and more recently was the founder and artistic director of Russian River Chamber Music in Healdsburg before launching the chamber music series Brave New Music there. He has been responsible for all programming in each of these organizations.

Gary has served on music faculties at a number of American colleges and universities, most recently at Santa Rosa Junior College.

The Rev. Sally Hanes Hubbell is the Rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Healdsburg. Originally from North Carolina, she has been fortunate to live in a variety of locales, ranging from San Francisco to Laramie, Wyoming, and as far afield as Germany and France. Before coming to Healdsburg in 2013 she lived in Colorado Springs. Her undergraduate degree is from Hampshire College, and she did her theological training at Duke Divinity School and Iliff School of Theology.

Sally loves art and poetry, and naturally gravitates to the Paul Mahder Gallery and the 222. Although they come at it from different professions, she and Paul share the same goal of making the kind of connections that allow our best selves to shine and strengthen our community in the process.

During the 20 years Laurie Glover taught at UC Davis, she had the good fortune to teach in the Nature and Culture program with world-class scientists such as Eldridge Moores and literary giants such as Gary Snyder, to collaborate with Latina and Israeli poets Maria Melendez and Yosefa Raz, and to co-author a leftist guide to California with historian Victor Silverman. She says she is retired, but in Fall 2023 she taught literature and writing classes for Semester at Sea.

Laurie has published poetry and essays in journals such as ZYZZYVA, Terrain, and California Quarterly. In the fall of 2022, she participated in a shipboard residency out of Svalbard, Norway with 27 other international artists. Some of her Arctic poems will be part of an installation by Taiwanese artist Jia Jen Lin currently showing in Taiwan and moving to Berlin this spring.