Faculty in MICA's First Year Experience program are focused on providing a commonly shared experience for all entering students. You can learn more about individual faculty members by clicking on their biographies below.
Stephen Hendee (California, US 1968) is a sculptor best known for producing large-scale architecturally ambitious installations. Inspired by a digital culture, he is considered a pioneering figure in the low-poly aesthetic, conveying vectorized properties to physical objects and materials, creating real world simulations of virtual space.
Born in New Zealand and raised in the United States, England and New Zealand, Hugh’s work seeks as a location the points of transaction between culture and natural phenomena. The confluence of labor, machinery, civic/institutional infrastructure and natural resources, such as water, air, dirt, wind, bring to the surface that which, in its abundance, tends to become invisible to us. The history and metaphor of the human relationship to natural resources, space, time, consumerism, art and language are among the issues Pocock investigates in his sculptures, installations and videos.
Originally from California, Carolyn came to Baltimore to earn her MFA from MICA's Mount Royal School of Art. After a brief stint in New York City she has returned to Baltimore where she resides with her family. Carolyn Case has shown throughout the Mid-Atlantic area.
Maia Chao holds a BA in Anthropology from Brown University and an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. She is a Fulbright grantee and a member of the artist collective Vox Populi in Philadelphia.Maia is an interdisciplinary artist whose work examines informal and formal institutions, such as family, school, museums, language, economic and legal systems.
TLaloC is an award-winning illustrator, interdisciplinary artist, graphic designer and Educator born in the industrial city of Monterrey, Mexico. His work is the result of a ludic exploration of art, illustration, graphic and product design. It is characterized by the ludic exploration of human behavior in regard to themes such as the fascination with the unknown, obsolescence, collective memory, nostalgia, and the elaboration of nonexistent languages. He holds an MFA in Illustration Practice from MICA, and was recipient of the Fulbright Scholarship, awarded by the Fulbright Comexus-García Robles organization.
LaToya is a native of North Little Rock, AR. She received her undergraduate degree in Studio Art with an emphasis in Painting from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and her MFA in printmaking from Purdue University. LaToya's work deals with figurative imagery that addresses the ideas of beauty and cultural identity while reexamining the traditional triadic artist, model, viewer, relationship.
A native of Denver, Colorado, Michelle knew she would be an artist as a child. She has lived in Maryland since 1987, when she moved to Baltimore for graduate study with Grace Hartigan at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). Her drawings, paintings, prints and mixed media collages combine image fragments from visual source materials with observed and imagined forms and spaces. Her work has been shown in the United States, France and Japan, and is in private and public collections including Syracuse University and the Borg-Warner Corporation.
Kelli Williams is an alumna of Morgan State University where she majored in Fine Art, with a concentration in Photography. She received her MFA from Columbus College of Art in Design. She is an animator, visual artist, and community artist. In her personal work, she uses stop-motion animation, photography, installation, and humor to create work that comments on society through the lens of social media and technology.