Episode #145 | Rose Sellery: Ripple Effect Art Festival

Podcast #145 | Rose Sellery: Ripple Effect Art Festival

Rose Sellery is a Santa Cruz-based multidisciplinary artist whose work uses the language of fashion to explore themes related to women’s lives and societal expectations. She grew up in Venice, California, at her parents' ceramic studio, located across the alley from a brothel, where crayons, paper, and clay were her toys. As she got older, she managed the family’s ceramics factory in downtown Los Angeles, learning how creativity, labor, and scale intersect. A relationship eventually pulled her north to Santa Cruz just before the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

Rose spent years helping her husband with custom fine-art woodworking in Santa Cruz, but as his practice moved deeper into solitary carving, she felt the pull to rediscover her own path. She enrolled at Cabrillo College, studying welding and jewelry, and quickly fell in love with the meticulous work, but the stories she wanted to tell kept outgrowing that format. Free from the constraints of precious metals and gemstones, she began experimenting with whatever materials best served the story: wire, bone, plastics, pearls, seed pods, hair.

Parallel to her studio work, she has become a key community builder, helping shape projects such as fashionART Santa Cruz, PiVot: The Art of Fashion, FashionTeens Santa Cruz, and her latest countywide project, Ripple Effect Arts Festival. Ripple Effect is an 11-day, multi-venue celebration that brings together more than a hundred performances, exhibitions, and hands-on arts experiences across Santa Cruz County, inviting the public not just to see art but to participate in it and feel its impact ripple through the community.

In this conversation, Rose shares how an unconventional childhood shaped her eye, how her work explores the quiet labor of being “seen,” and the origin and intent behind Ripple Effect Arts Festival.

rippleartsfestsantacruz.org

rosesellery.com

Instagram: @rose_sellery

Instagram: @rippleartsfestsantacruz