Colleen Sorenson

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Eleven years a full-time resident in San Miguel, Colleen is Azulejo Dama, the Tile Lady.

A mosaic artist of 30 years, her main focus is on mosaic-tiled "arte urbano" graffiti art. In 2005, she presented her first series of collaborative work with graffiti writer Supher in San Antonio, Texas. A series of thirteen large-scale pieces were completed to open the dialogue of "graffiti is art" in colleges and universities. Her work is the first of it's kind, applying handmade mosaic tile to wild style images painted in aerosol. The tiles are glazed according to the colors of the aerosol paint used, portraying a burst of three-dimensional visual enhancement .

A secondary series of works are the thoroughly whimsical garden ladies for indoors or outdoors. Each lady is one of a kind and has something important to say using quotes found on San Miguel friend's facebook postings. All translated to Spanish. Some are inspirational, some humorous, some just a bit irreverent. All are very fun and colorful, guaranteed to bring a smile.

And of course, Colleen is best known in San Miguel for the Muros en Blanco street art project and Guadalupe Distrito de Arte. Murals of any kind were once illegal and, after tenacious persuasion, permission was finally granted in 2013 for legal street art. Since then, around 130 murals have been painted by local, national and international artists. The Muros en Blanco project all began in Colleen's studio, patio and house. There are plenty of stories!