San Miguel Women: Polly Stark Ortega. A Lifetime of Art in San Miguel
- San Miguel Life
- 17 hours ago
- 6 min read
Updated: 12 hours ago
For Polly Stark Ortega, art and San Miguel have been intertwined for generations.
Polly arrived from New York as a child in 1973 with her artist and designer parents, Alice and Bill Stark, and her sister, CC. Her grandmother, a commercial illustrator, had already made San Miguel home in the early 1960s. As Polly puts it, art simply “runs in our family’s veins.”
Growing up in San Miguel in the 1970s surrounded by artists, musicians, teachers, and makers left a lasting imprint. Polly went on to study printmaking and ceramics at the Cleveland Institute of Art before returning to San Miguel, where she married musician Victorino Ortega and raised their three children while they both pursued creative careers.
Formally trained in printmaking, painting, and surface design, Polly has exhibited throughout Mexico and taught printmaking at both Centro Cultural Nigromante "Bellas Artes" and Instituto Allende. Her work draws from more than 50 years of life in Mexico—its landscapes, folk art, craft traditions, colors, patterns, and the memories of growing up in a San Miguel very different from the one we know today.
And woven throughout Polly’s story are the women of San Miguel. Artists, educators, makers, and entrepreneurs encouraged her, created alongside her, and, as she puts it, “had my back.” Long before we were talking about women building creative communities, Polly was living it—and watching generations of women quietly help shape San Miguel’s.
Her career has taken many creative forms: artist, muralist, designer, printmaker, and educator, including more than 16 years teaching history and science. Through every chapter, painting remained a constant.
Now retired from teaching, Polly has returned to her art full-time and, together with her daughters Luna and Sonia, opened Salon Cacomixtle in the historic Hotel Sautto in Centro.
More than a gallery, Salon Cacomixtle is a space for art, workshops, experimentation, conversation, and collaboration—a new chapter for Polly, but one deeply rooted in the creative San Miguel she has known nearly all her life.
Tell us about what you’re creating or working on in San Miguel right now.
I recently opened a new gallery in Centro Histórico with our daughters, Luna and Sonia. Upon retiring as a longtime teacher at the Victoria Robbins School, I returned full-time to my other profession: painting.
I have always had a studio in the house where Victorino, my husband, and I live. However, the current state of the Libramiento El Caracol, as well as the “off the beaten path” to our home, had made it nearly impossible for those wishing to visit.
A remarkable thing happened! A space within the delightful historic grounds of the Hotel Sautto was offered to us as a potential gallery. We jumped at the opportunity; the timing was perfect. We spruced up one of the former bedrooms and created Salon Cacoamixtle, named for the mischievous, resourceful, and adorable monkey-like animal that thrives in the garden here. Our spirit animal!
We love the energy of this venerable, family-operated former finca, with its fruit trees, meandering paths, and unspoiled sprawling garden: it’s a lovely touchstone to the San Miguel of days gone by. I can recall when the rooms at the Hotel Sautto were, for the better part, artists’ residences and studios. We have had visitors come into the gallery and, with a stirring sense of déjà vu, say they stayed or painted or had a fling in this very space decades ago.
In addition to being a spot to showcase my paintings, we offer a variety of easy, one-day workshops to residents and visitors, adults and kids—everything from collaging to “Stitch and Bitch” to experimental drawing and collaborative labs, with lots of laughter and warmth included.
I enjoy working side by side with people who have never laid hands on paint, paper, and scissors before and seeing their joy at watching a personal collage come alive before their very eyes. The sturdy, large wooden table also serves as a collaborative meet-up spot for semillero - an incubator style think tanks, which is a facet of the space we’re eager to see become an important part of Salon Cacomixtle as well.
I also am currently in a show at a relatively new, dynamic gallery, also located on Hernández Macías, called Tinta y Tiempo/Espacio Ecuménico, curated and managed by Alejandra Bustamante. Centro Cultural El Nigromante and the Ángela Peralta Theatre are right next door, so it really feels like we are working and playing in the shadow of gigantic history makers… so many creative forces have made their mark on this particular block in Centro.
How has living in San Miguel influenced your work, creativity, or the way you do business?
I grew up in Mexico, after arriving from New York as a kid in 1973 with my artist/designer parents, Alice and Bill Stark, and sister CC. My grandmother had moved to San Miguel in the early 1960s, after a career in commercial illustration. Needless to say, art runs in our family’s veins.
Imagery gathered as a child, and then as a young woman, brims over in my work; a vast personal wellspring of touchstone objects and memories particular to San Miguel de Allende.
I’m especially indebted to my immersion into Mexico through the shared experiences with my husband, Victorino, an accomplished San Miguel musician. He opened my eyes and senses to a “Mexicanidad” for which I feel quite honored to have been accepted into.
That unique perspective, as well as the vivid imagery from growing up here in the ’70s, the folklore, the overlapping patterns, ephemeral fleeting juxtapositions, layers and layers of history, the natural landscape of Mexico, its skies, sounds, its creatures, as well as my own place as a child surrounded by so much whirling imagery.
There isn’t a day that goes by that I am not gobsmacked by the surreal (a very overused word, but it still rings true!) sensory collision experience that Mexico, and therefore San Miguel, gifts us with.
What do you hope people experience, feel, or take away from your work?
Hopefully, the experiences I convey in my paintings can be felt and enjoyed by others. Whether they are poignant, whimsical, boisterous, or “jumbles,” there’s usually a lot to look at, and a lot of personal joy in most of the pieces that the viewer can also relate to.
There’s often a story waiting to be told behind the imagery of each piece, but I’ll let the viewer come up with their own conclusion.
How would you describe the community of women in San Miguel, and how has it influenced or supported you?
There are SO many dynamic women in San Miguel! Exceptionally bright, creative, industrious, quirky individuals!
As a result of moving as children to San Miguel, I have fond memories of so many women who contributed their diverse talents, whether as a means of survival or with the wisdom to build upon an opportunity, and unwittingly contribute to a thriving vortex of creative community.
My own “sisters” were women working in the arts or in education. I fondly recall how each one of them encouraged me and had my back (as a very young mother of three, married happily to my musician husband, barely making rent each month!), granting me the freedom to create and teach.
So, whether it was designing one-of-a-kind wearable art jackets with Judith Roberts, designing some of the most iconic tin lighting with my sister CC Stark, or starting up our decorative paint finish mural business with Victorino, my husband; teaching at Bellas Artes under the brilliant force of Carmen Masip; working as a history and sciences high school teacher with Victoria Robbins for over 16 years, which was incredibly rewarding; and, of course, our own mother, our father, and grandmother, all amazing artists as well…I’d have to say that girl power sprinkled magic into this brew of careers!
As San Miguel continues to grow, what do you hope never changes?
Given San Miguel’s explosive popularity, clearly there is opportunity for serious improvements in the cities infrastructure, but that’s for another chat.
I hope that the ephemeral moments, those surreal sensory juxtapositions, and the authentic warmth, kindness, and tolerance of the Sanmiguelenses, the fiestas, and happy chaos that comes with them never stop.
Fast Five
A San Miguel place that always inspires you: The sublime skies and San Miguel’s well-kept secrets.
Your favorite way to spend the weekend in San Miguel: At home, cooking for the family, painting and, of course, gardening, which I am passionate about.
A local person, business, or project you think more people should know about: Unabashedly, our own two daughters, Luna, event planner extraordinaire through Luna Lazuli Events, and Sonia, interior architect!
Something about San Miguel that still surprises you: The synchronicity of unexpectedly meeting friends going back to our childhood in the ’70s and picking up where we left off, as though no time had passed at all. Shared camaraderie. There is so much to discover, on a daily basis. I’m still fascinated and rewarded by this country’s surprising quirks after a lifetime!
Finish this sentence: My San Miguel life is…a memoir full of the stories about growing up here, just waiting patiently to be written!
Connect with Polly
Want to see more of Polly’s work? Explore her personal website and Instagram, visit Salon Cacomixtle in Centro to see her work in person and discover upcoming workshops and events, and follow Tinta y Tiempo l for another side of her creative world.
📍Salon Cacomixtle at Hotel Sautto Hernández Macías 59, Int. 4
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