Colleen Flanigan is a visual, performing and environmental artist residing in Portland, Oregon. Raised along the Monterey Peninsula in California, she has been listening to the ocean tide for much of her life. Through her socio-ecological alter egos, Miss Snail Pail and Amphitrite, she has joined the voices defending our natural resources She is in the first class of TED Senior Fellows. With more than 20 years of arts background, she works in jewelry, steel sculptures, tile work, and interactive mixed media on conceptual and collaborative projects; she also makes ball-and-socket skeletons for stop-motion puppets. Recently she applied her metalworking expertise to the stop-motion animated feature film, Coraline. A teacher of sculpture and metalsmithing, she's known for her large, 3-D steel "drawings," woven with wire by children in group projects. Flanigan is the first visual artist to be certified by the Global Coral Reef Alliance in Biorock mineral accretion, a technology for coral reef restoration that shares many metallurgical, electrical and chemical principles with her early sculpture. Currently she is developing a performance, art, sci-action exhibition about the ocean. At the intersection of biology, human technological innovation, and multi-media arts lies her vision for helping the corals regain their color.

ColleenFlanigan.com
globalcoral.org
laika.com

twitter: @misssnailpail

”Metal is mutable. It changes in an instant. It wants to transform.”