Photo by Ben Rektor.
Amber Rose Tortorelli, Mani(a)c
Welcome to my lair.
I designed this installation to look like my studio. Folx who know me will step into this project space and say, “Amber lives here.” The point isn’t to show the best of my work, or the worst. Just everything as it is. I wanted to give the viewer an opportunity to look inside my world. To see what it is like to be a creator living with my condition. This exhibit is meant to be interactive. Flip through books, look inside drawers, read my stories, smell the smells, watch the video, post an anonymous confession on the wall, get the cards stuck to your shoes. Just beware: there is danger hidden in the beauty that is chaos.
I have scattered statements throughout the exhibit to help you better understand why I felt creating this installation was important. Thanks to the stigma associated with my condition there are risks to exposing myself so honestly. I hope you, the viewer, will step into my space and appreciate that shedding this kind of light on myself is not an easy thing to do. It is my hope that you leave this experience with more understanding and newfound empathy. Much of society views people like me as dangerous or incapable. I want to change that.
About the artist
Constantly risking absurdity, as American poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti put it, is a great way to describe the Clown Princess of Worcester, AmberRose ToiletFire Tortorelli.
Although her primary focus is in the visual arts, this jester is a far cry from a one-trick pony. She is also a musician, poet, photographer, filmmaker/videographer, theatre director and model. Tortorelli never does anything by half-measures. Among her numerous paintings and sculptures some of her current projects include the release of her next book of poetry titled "Cigarettes and Suffragettes," filming a stop-motion short feature, writing scripts for her theatre troupe, "Drunk in a Toy Store and Out of Tampons with Aarne, Thompson and Kurt Cobain," and the release of her band Sapling's latest album, The Apocalypse Musical. "My intentions," says Tortorelli, "are to create art that focuses on truth rather than what is perceived as conventionally beautiful. I strive to make visually and conceptually challenging socially-conscious art. My nature challenges convention. I set it on fire, hex it, drag it through the mud, defenestrate it, and cut off its head."
