Faculty

MICA's Pre-College Art and Design residency faculty are regionally, nationally, and internationally recognized working artists and designers, scholars, instructors, critics, advocates, and mentors. Many faculty are MICA graduates; indeed some are former Pre-College students such as yourself.

Meet Some of Our Faculty

Haylin Choi

Hayelin is a visual storyteller with illustration and graphic design background. Hayelin made her illustration debut with Alice Waters and the Trip to Delicious, which earned a starred review from School Library Journal. Her recent publication also includes Bread Lab! She studied illustration at the School of Visual Arts in NYC and is pursuing a graduate degree in graphic design at MICA.

Mai Ly Degnan

Mai Ly Degnan is an award-winning illustrator and professor. She earned her BFA in Illustration at the Savannah College of Art and Design, as well as her MFA in Illustration Practice at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Mai Ly enjoys creating humorous illustrations with tedious line work, pattern making, and bright colors. Her work has been recognized by The Society of Illustrators of New York and Los Angeles, American Illustration, and 3x3. Some of Mai Ly's favorite things include greeting cards, pattern making, and pugs. Selected clients include Boston Globe, Bust Magazine, Baltimore City Paper, VICE Magazine, NPR, Frankie Magazine, The Bark Magazine, Tigress For Girls, and The Oyster Review.

Lillian Bayley Hoover

Lillian Bayley Hoover's paintings explore the banal, awkward, overlooked, and imperfect elements of our material environment. Hoover was awarded a full fellowship at Vermont Studio Center for a residency in 2015. In 2012, she won the Bethesda Urban Partnership's Trawick Award. She has been selected as a semifinalist for Baltimore's Sondheim Prize on five occasions. Hoover has received many other honors, including the Bethesda Young Artist Painting Award, three Individual Artist Awards from the Maryland State Arts Council, and a grant from Philadelphia's Center for Emerging Visual Artists, which allowed her to conduct research and photograph in Istanbul, Turkey.

Bartholomew O'Reilly

Bartholomew O'Reilly was born in Dublin, Ireland and has lived in Maryland since 2003. He makes interdisciplinary work that includes painting, drawing, poetry and video. He teaches in the undergraduate program at MICA, as well as Harford Community College. His work has been shown extensively in Baltimore, Washington D.C., Philadelphia and New York City, as well as Ireland and Northern Ireland. Bart received his BFA from the National College of Art and Design in Dublin in 2000 and his MFA from MICA in 2012. He's been the recipient of grants from the Baltimore Social Innovation Journal and Individual Artists Award from the Baltimore Office of Promotions and the Arts. Last year his paintings were published in Woven Tale Press Magazine and won second place in their fine art competition. You can find his work at www.bartoreilly.net.

Cornel Rubino

Cornel Rubino is a winner of the Society of Publication Designers and Communication Arts Award among others. He is a longtime contributor to The New Yorker and his editorial clients include The Washington Post, Bloomberg, The Atlantic, The Boston Globe, and other national magazines. His drawing installations cover topics as varied as Loneliness, Isolation, Cruelty, the Disabled, and the Homeless. A Foundation faculty member, he has taught Visual Thinking, Forum, Drawing, Painting, and Sculptural Forms. As a member of the Illustration faculty, he has taught illustration from first-year to senior thesis at MICA over the past 12 years.

Nick Simko

Nick Simko is an artist and educator based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. His studio practice utilizes figurative imagery to navigate cultural processes of identity formation. Simko’s work has been exhibited at museums and galleries throughout the United States, including The Vizcaya Museum and Gardens in Miami, The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, The University of New Mexico Art Museum in Albuquerque, The Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Philadelphia, and Hillyer Arts Space in Washington, DC. In 2018, Simko was one of two artists selected for the Exceptional Visual Scholars Program at the Sanitary Tortilla Factory in Albuquerque. He is a 2018 recipient of the Van Deren Coke Fellowship in Photography from the University of New Mexico. Simko holds an MFA in Photography from the University of New Mexico as well as a BFA in Art History, Theory & Criticism from the Maryland Institute College of Art.