Mona Caron is the daughter of renowned Swiss theater and opera set designer Peter Bissegger, and of couturi�re [costume designer] Elisabeth Bissegger. Mona moved to San Francisco, California in 1992 from her native Ticino (theItalian-speaking canton of Switzerland). She was born in Locarno and grew up in the Centovalli region in the small town of Intragna. She speaks Italian, French, Swiss German and English. After attending the University of Zurich (English Literature, Linguistics and Japanese), she relocated in San Francisco where she attended the Academy of Art College. She graduated with honors in 1996, B.F.A. in Illustration.

Mona currently works as a freelance illustrator and muralist (contact information) and teaches illustration at the Academy of Art College College.

Clients include: Sun Microsystems, Holt, Reinhardt and Winston, Scholastic Books, Tyndale, CMP Media, the AARP, and many others.

Mona illustrated the children's book The Boy Without a Name by Afghan philosopher and author Idries Shah, published by Hoopoe/Malor Books, Palo Alto 2000; ISBN 1-883536-20-0, available from all major distributors.

Mona was the lead artist of the award-winning mural on San Francisco's Duboce Bikeway, which received wide press coverage including feature articles in publications as far as South Africa, Great Britain, Mexico and Australia. The Duboce Bikeway Mural was given an official commendation by the City of San Francisco in December 1998, and won the Precita Eyes "Best New Mural" award during 1999's Mural Awareness Month, as well as the S.F.Bicycle coalition's Golden Wheel Award. It was nominated "best mural" in local publications (SF Weekly, San Francisco Magazine), and has found its way into tourist guidebooks on SF.

Mona has also completed indoor murals for Sun Microsystems, as well as private clients in San Francisco. She is currently at work on the design for an historic mural in downtown Brisbane.

Mona has also done work in costume and set design. She has worked on costume and oversize hat designs for San Francisco's famous musical revue Beach Blanket Babylon.

She has also collaborated with her father Peter Bissegger on three-dimensional projects for museum exhibits in Europe, notably some large fine art shows curated by Harald Szeemann (Director of the Venice Biennale, curator at the Zurich Museum of Modern Art). Such projects included:

• "Austria im Rosennetz": an exhibit at the MAK (Museum of Applied Arts) Vienna, Austria 1996. Work included sculpting, molding and casting scale replicas of neoclassical busts and full-figure statues for a scale model of Pargfrieder's 180-sculpture statuary.

• "Der Hang zum Gesamtkunstwerk": helped in scale model detailing of Gabriele D'Annunzio's "Vittoriale." international traveling exhibit.

• collaborated on the reconstruction of a mask from Bauhaus artist Oskar Schlemmer's famous "Triadische Ballett" (1916-1922), on exhibit at MOMA Houston, 2001.