Meet our teaching artists

Dean is an author and illustrator who's been published in Boom! comics, Darkhorse, and Penguin Random House. His most recent work is the award winning graphic novel 'Cassi and the House of Memories'. Dean is also a gallery artist and has shown his work in Portland, New York, San Francisco, and Oakland. Dean works out of his studio at Helvella Art in Oakland.

Cara Goldstein is a California Credentialed Visual Arts Teacher with over 15 years experience teaching AP Art, High School Art, Portfolio Development, Cartooning and

Illustration, and Media Arts. She is a Fulbright Scholar and a Yale University National Teacher Fellow. She's a Teacher Coach, Comics Integration and Literacy Specialist, and has her MFA in Creative Writing. She has lectured at SF State, SF Art Institute, Alternative Press Expo, and the Getty Museum. Her work has been published in The SF Examiner and Star 82 Review. She is proud of mentoring many talented students who are award winning professional artists and business owners. 

Mildred Hankinson is an artist and instructor from San Francisco, CA. She studied fine art and illustration at the Academy of Art University, and has taught drawing and painting throughout the Bay Area for over a decade. Her work has been featured in multiple publications as both an illustrator and contributing artist.

Barbara Pollak is a Fine artist, Curator and Arts Educator based in San Francisco. Since 2016, she has focused on working with tweens and teens to develop strong art portfolios which emphasize creative exploration, conceptual ideas and personal vision. Most recently, she taught Drawing and Illustration Pre-College and Atelier classes at the California College of the Arts as well as individualized workshops in figure drawing and painting. 

She received her BFA in Animation/Film from the Rhode Island School of Design and her MA in Arts Education from Boston U.

Visit her teaching website here: www.freckleshop.com and her IG page: 

https://www.instagram.com/happypixart

Annie Wong is a Bay Area artist and creative workshop facilitator specializing in playful, hands-on experiences that help people reconnect with imagination and self-expression. She’s best known for her stop motion animation work as Headexplodie, with collaborations including The New York Times, Adult Swim, and The Greater Good Science Center. Her whimsical animations have been viewed over 40 billion times on Giphy.com.

Web: Headexplodie.co

Instagram: @Headexplodie 

I'm an Animator from the Bay. I graduated from California College of the Arts in 2024. I love the ocean, retro aesthetics and early internet culture. A lot of my art and the series that I am working on take inspiration from that. I do supplementary animation for short cartoons and advertisements and I teach between those projects. 

Instagram: @semi.aquatic

Lije is a nonbinary artist and educator who has taught animation, game design, 3D modeling, and illustration at the university level across Parsons, NYU, CCA, the New York Film Academy, and more. Their work centers on gentleness and soft aesthetics, exploring how “cute” imagery can disarm an audience and operate as a powerful tool for persuasion, subversion, and unexpected impact.

Web: Lije.com

Felicia attended the Art Students League of New York in 2006, moving next to San Francisco, Ca where she began her career as a private instructor of painting and a fine artist. She has worked full time as an artist since 2010, exhibiting in many shows nationally and internationally including The BP Portrait Award in 2015 and 2018 for which she was awarded second prize. She has been featured in podcasts and publications including The Huffington Post, Dazed Magazine, and numerous articles in Artists & Illustrators Magazine UK 2020-2022. Felicia is a highly sought after teacher having taught at museums, schools and privately all over the globe. In 2017 she was invited as resident and grant recipient to the "Redbull House of Art" project in Detroit, Michigan. She currently maintains a studio in San Francisco, CA where she works and offers coaching remotely to private students.

http://www.feliciaforte.com/

https://linktr.ee/feliciaforte

Ares Bybina is a multidisciplinary artist and fabricator who has called the Bay Area home since 2008. With a background that spans Visual Development (Academy of Art), Welding (Laney), and Aerospace NDT (AATA), Ares bridges the gap between fine art and industrial STEM.

​After a successful career in the technical field, she returned to her creative roots to bring a sense of soul and craftsmanship back to her work. Her oil paintings have been showcased in San Francisco galleries, and she recently served as the Lead Metal Fabricator for the Burning Man Honoraria project, Aquatica. Ares enjoys working on oil landscapes and pet portraits in the mean time.

Mair is an adopted Chinese American who grew up in an apartment with her mom and sister in Brooklyn, NY. They attended Edward R Murrow high school and were accepted into the art department their first year. Mair was accepted into the University of Pennsylvania, and The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts combined BFA program for college. They graduated with a major in drawing while minoring in printmaking and art history. After graduating, they moved to Denver, Colorado, and were a cultural art specialist for the Boys and Girls Club for several years. In the spring of 2022, Mair graduated from the Metropolitan State University of Denver's Art Licensure program and holds a California Single Subject Teaching Credential. They are currently teaching in the Bay Area of California.

Amber is a local animator residing in Fremont, CA. A recent graduate of Ringling College of Art & Design, she has experience in both 2D and 3D animation techniques. She has taught a variety of classes for children, from painting to cartooning, and is actively involved with organizations such as Women in Animation.

Laura Shefler is an artist and teacher who works in collages, paintings, drawings, and prints. She offers art history talks on an eclectic range of topics (https://www.laurasheflerart.net/talks), from the prehistoric rock art of the Sahara to use of lace in contemporary art. Through the UC Berkeley Academic Talent Development program, she has developed courses in writing, public speaking, and art history, including high school courses that combine academic study with field trips and studio projects to foster a lifelong passion for and deeper understanding of the visual arts.

Moving from where he grew up in Los Angeles to San Francisco, Calvin Lai studied drawing and printmaking at San Francisco State University, and then in 2008, he enrolled in the Academy of Art for illustration. Calvin works as a full time oil painter and he is currently on the faculty at the California College of the Arts.