2016 White House Ornament Student Designer Biography

Kayla Whelan is a native of Pelham, NH, who graduated from Pelham High School in 2012. Kayla received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with a concentration in Graphic Design from Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, Massachusetts in 2016. While at Montserrat she performed an internship at Simple Tuition in Boston, an online company assisting college-bound students. She has also worked for the college designing materials for the 2015 commencement.

“I first realized I wanted to be an artist when I was in kindergarten. My teacher was complimenting my stick figures and suggested that I should be an artist when I grew up. The thought had never occurred to me, and the idea that I could draw for a living was the most amazing thing I had ever heard. I had two incredible art teachers in high school who encouraged me to continue when I began to doubt myself, and pushed me to succeed. I attended Montserrat’s pre-college program and fell in love with the school, applying and getting in a few months later. My junior year, I took a class called Design Factory with Design Department Chair John Colan. It was a small class that worked on projects for real clients. One was the ornament design contest for the White House Historical Association. I put a lot of effort into the project and Professor Colan pushed me to participate and was infinitely helpful to me. I was thrilled to learn I had won this prestigious competition and can’t wait to see the ornament created!”

About Montserrat College of Art

Montserrat College of Art is a small, private, residential, undergraduate college located in historic, coastal Beverly, MA, 30 minutes from downtown Boston. Montserrat’s personalized education is focused on developing each student’s individual creative vision, while they acquire expertise in the tools to express it. Students build strong critical thinking, communication, critique, and creative problem-solving skills - all core leadership competencies. Employing design thinking, this process prepares students for success in the booming creative economy of today and the jobs of the future.

With a student population of 400, Montserrat maintains a low faculty-student ratio that is ideal for the mentoring style and experiential focus that is the hallmark of the Montserrat education. A variety of concentrations in the fine and applied arts are offered, with minors in art history and creative writing. All students complete a required internship and a thesis project/exhibition evaluated by experts in the field