Who is Rose Turtle Ertler I wonder?
I Google her, and come across a very interesting, extremely
busy, highly creative local artist with an impressive CV.
Music is her life but she is not your standard
singer-songwriter. At the heart of her creativity is collaboration – she likes
people, and she likes bringing them together. For Rose, the further away their
worlds are, the better! Rose has instigated, supported and nurtured numerous
community arts projects and brought ‘unlikely groups of people’ together to
create ‘high-quality performance work’.
What really strikes me about Rose is her interest in people.
She is passionate about “bringing out the
extraordinary aspects of apparently ordinary people.” She believes that
no-one has a boring life story to tell and makes it her job to coax the
extraordinary out of the ordinary with every group and person she works with.
I ask Rose what is it about collaboration that is so
appealing? “I like people,” she answers
with a smile in her voice “people are full of surprises”. Rose admits she has
always loved working in groups and has a genuine interest in people and a
fascination for their stories.
Besides the lure of people, it is creating meaningful
worthwhile multi-layered art that is also at the heart of Rose’s inspiration.
She is currently working toward a ‘performance installation’ – another great
community art project that will involve the people of Horsham. With the theme ‘Things that make the heart beat fast’,
participants will create visual works that will be shown with personal
soundtracks. It sounds like a performance to look out for.
On Saturday the 9th of August we will have the
chance to enjoy one of Rose’s unique and very special collaborations. In 2012
she teamed up with illustrator Mandy Ord to create a piece for a Comic Festival
in Melbourne. They put song to comic and comic to song. The result is artistic,
entertaining storytelling that will touch your heart.
Rose and Mandy love working together so much that they have
decided to take Follow me down the way
further, and will turn it into a children’s book.
To experience Rose’s live performance of Follow me down the way head to the
Bendigo Library at 11.10 am on the 9th of August.
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