Kamali Thornell, born in 1974, grew up in Dorchester. He studied art, including graphic design, illustration, painting and digital arts at UMass Amherst and Northeastern University. His art reflects the urban setting where he was raised. His recent work covers various themes including artists, heroes, New England landscapes, and current events.
The Alley, is the culmination of an independent study course, while Kamali was an undergraduate student at UMass Amherst. The project was to create a comic book, and the inspiration came from his mother, Consuelo, who owned several cats. Each was a unique character, and they were all either rescues from the street, or the offspring of those original Alley-cats. Dadisi was a large black cat, with huge fangs, rescued as a kitten. The comic was rough and unfinished, but in graduate school, years later, the story was revisited, as an assignment to create an animatic, a short animation. This three-minute film ended where this story begins, and that animatic is available from the media moment link on this site.
This is the first part of the adventure. It was story-boarded first, and then put together and revised with the text. The next books are coming soon.