Visual Narrative

Kate Castelli is an artist living and working in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She earned her BFA in Illustration and Art History at the Art Institute of Boston, and her MFA in printmaking and book arts from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Her studio practice exists at the intersection of books, works on paper, and collections that explore poetic and formal juxtapositions in order to connect what cannot be connected. She is rarely without a sketchbook, frequently haunts used bookstores, and is hopelessly addicted to coffee.

Diana Arcadipone is a maker who studied painting and printmaking at Western Michigan University, where she earned a BFA degree with honors. She earned an MFA degree from Ohio University with honors. She has been awarded artist residencies at Dorland Mountain Arts Colony in Temecula, California as well as The Banff Centre and the Leighton Artists' Colony in Alberta, Canada.

She has exhibited work internationally and her work is held in many public and private collections in the US and Europe. She travels and researches art making techniques globally and lives in Maine. Diana Arcadipone creates artworks on and of paper.

Her passion for making art with natural materials, and mixed media emerged from an early devotion to craft techniques such as papermaking, book arts, basketry, embroidery and textiles. Arcadipone's work is informed by primitive art, folk art, traveling, and the natural environment; it is the intersection of these influences that defines her work.

Tom Barrett is an adjunct illustration faculty here at the College of Art and Design. His academic expertise includes transparent media, Photoshop, and Illustrator. Outside of class, many students have found Tom walking his dog around the Boston Commons. They have also seen her as a demonstration subject in class.

Louisa Bertman is an award winning illustrator, animator, filmmaker and visual journalist. Through visual narratives including illustration, gifs and animated shorts, in conjunction with technology and social media, her work brings voice and attention to social and political awareness, social justice and social innovation. She has participated in recent exhibitions at the SVA Chelsea Gallery in New York, Museum of the City of New York, Society of Illustrators in New York, Boston City Hall Plaza and Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, among others.

Louisa earned an MFA in Visual Narrative from the School of Visual Arts in New York and a BFA in Illustration from Parsons School of Design.

Diane Bigda is an adjunct faculty teaching in the Illustration department, focusing on drawing, transparent media, surface design, and printmaking. Diane also teaches Natural History Drawing in her home. She is an alumna of the Art Institute of Boston.

David Bondar is an illustration faculty member whose focus has been on Anatomy and Figure Drawing and Painting Techniques in Illustration. He holds a BFA and MFA from the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. In addition to his teaching he is also a Doctor of Optometry and has held a private practice for ten years.

Tim Finn is an Adjunct Animation Faculty and has been teaching at the College of Art and Design since 2005. He has recently taught Character Animation, Alternative Comix, Drawing for Animation, and History of Animation. Finn earned his BFA at Rhode Island School of Design and his MAT at School of the Museum of Fine Arts. He owns a comic book store, Hub Comics, 1.3 miles from the College of Art and Design. His teaching style balances personal expression with industry expectations. He provides copious examples from films, props, handouts, and anecdotes in class.

Sarah Gay-O’Neill is a multimedia artist living in Somerville, MA. She received both her BFA (illustration and animation) as well as MAT/AE from Massachusetts College of Art & design. In addition to teaching at Lesley, she also teaches at MassArt, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and works in media technology at Harvard University. Sarah regularly shows work in local galleries, participates in open studios and has in recent years evolved her practice into public realms by way of murals (one of which expanded the entire first floor of Harvard’s Continuum building). She frequently live illustrates for Saks Fifth Ave, Jo Malone London, and various other fashion and perfume companies.


Leah Hayes is an illustrator, writer, producer, and graphic novelist. She has published several graphic novels with Fantagraphics Books, including Funeral of the Heart, Holy Moly, and her latest work, Not Funny Ha-Ha, which was voted one of the "Top Ten Graphic Novels Of The Year" by Forbes as well as being a New York Times Best-Seller. Hayes's editorial illustrations make regular appearances in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Newsweek, McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, and many other publications. She is working on her newest graphic novel, and has most recently begun a live-action adaptation of Not Funny Ha-Ha for network television.

After graduating from Parsons School of Design, Hayes returned as adjunct faculty in the Illustration Department, staying on for nearly ten years. After Parsons, she then went on to teach Illustration at Mass College of Art, Endicott College, and is now faculty at Lesley University. Hayes has also taught Graphic Novel Writing, Animation, Figure Drawing, and Typography at various times.

In addition to being an illustrator, Hayes is also a musician and producer, and has written many songs for pop, and hip-hop artists including Lil' Wayne, Dillion Francis, and others.

Diane's tufted portraits celebrate the lives of local rescue animals and adoption narratives. By mixing disparate motifs and media, her art aims to re-frame the use and meaning of animal bodies in our culture. Trained as a figure painter, Diane's human subjects' textile rich environments were featured in her early paintings.

As she copied vintage scarves and pastoral scenes on Toile de Jouy and Peacock chenille bedspreads, Diane became interested in the use of both animal imagery as well as animal print patterns. She studied how luxury brands used animals to symbolize pedigree, luxury and colonial exoticism. Her goal is to update the idea of the bucolic textile or animal pelt rug into something both joyful and critical.

For the “Belly of the Beast” project, Diane creates tufted paintings to produce low relief full body portraits of rescue animals sleeping on their backs. Tufting, or looping yarn though a backing cloth is commonly used in carpet making. She uses a combination of thousands of loop pile stitches at various heights and cuts pile loops to create fuzzy textures. Through exaggerated color, rich texture and the animal pose itself, skin rug transforms into an interspecies interconnected meditation. 

Sarah Hulsey teaches in the photography and illustration departments here at the College of Art and Design. She focuses on book arts and letterpress in her courses. Sarah holds an MFA in Book Arts and Printmaking from the University of the Arts (2013), a PhD in Linguistics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2008), and an AB in Linguistics from Harvard University (2001).

Mark Steele teaches in the Illustration department here at the College of Art and Design. He brings with him an expertise in illustration and has taught a range of courses, including 3-D Projects, Painting and Color Techniques, Experimental Illustration, Boston Sketchbook, and Drawing for Illustration. He holds a BFA from Boston University.

Natalya Zahn is a Boston-based illustrator, designer and visual story-teller. Deeply inspired by animals, nature, and science, her award-winning work explores the intersection of art, design, and education. She has been featured in "National Geographic", Longwood Botanical Gardens, the San Diego Zoo, and MIT Media Lab. She is skilled in both traditional media and digital techniques, and works fluently across industries, from corporate storyboarding to book publishing to exhibit design and interpretation.