Episode #145 | Rose Sellery: Ripple Effect Art Festival
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Rose Sellery 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. For someone who had arrived knowing no one, the damage left from the quake showed how shared vulnerability could form a human connection.
As things settled, Rose’s work life shifted. She 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. Over time, her experimental, narrative-driven approach evolved into her current multidisciplinary practice that uses the language of fashion and the body to probe themes related to women’s lives and societal expectations.
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.
Join Rose and more than 80 arts organizations for the Ripple Effect Arts Festival, April 16–26, 2026, as Santa Cruz County comes alive with roughly 150 performances, exhibitions, and hands-on arts events.
rosesellery.com | Instagram: rose_sellery
rippleartsfestsantacruz.org | Instagram: rippleartsfestsantacruz
M.K. Contemporary Art Gallery | Instagram: mkcontemporray.art
Artwork:
#1 – Rags to Riches – an opulent, transformative garment in which the wearer appears to emerge from a cascade of tattered rags, ascending into a radiant display of gold and glittering symbols of wealth and abundance.
#2 – Union of Two Soles – Two shoes joined as one represent true love, unity, and lasting partnership.
#3 – Pearl – Embracing the expectations of a longed-for child, this life-size dress of a pregnant female is covered in pearls, a metaphor for the mystery of what lies within.
Featured in Issue 12.3, Perform, July/Aug 2020, with “Pivot: The Art of Fashion”
