We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Rosśa Crean a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Rosśa, thanks for joining us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?
The most meaningful project of mine to date has been my operatic duodrama, “The Priestess of Morphine.” The concept came to me during a short time of many losses in my life, but I feel that it was my father in particular (who had most recently passed at that time) who brought the central figure of that story to my attention from the Other Side.
The very first week of cleaning out his house consisted literally of taking boxes after boxes of books to the local bookstore to sell off. The third day of doing this, I sat in an empty chair at the store, sweaty, sad, and exhausted. I looked up from where I sat to find the book “Priestess of Morphine: The Lost Writings of Marie-Madeleine in the Time of Nazis” (Marie Madeleine, Ronald K. Siegel, Eric A. Bye). I opened the book and read about how this woman, born Gertrud Günther, wrote over 46 books, beginning at age 16. Her first book, “Auf Kypros,” sold over one million copies during her lifetime. She was a German Jew, lesbian poet and novelist whose eroticism and love for morphine was revealed in many of her shocking, sensational, and bestselling books of the early twentieth century. During the Third Reich in 1932, Gertrud’s identity was discovered by the Nazis, who in turn condemned her work as degenerate. Her avoidance of the concentration camps during World War II was all due to her marriage to Heinrich, a Nazi official, as well as the fact that her son had also joined that Nazi Party at this time. In 1943, she was committed to a sanatorium under the pretense of treating her morphine addiction. She died mysteriously in 1944 while under the care of Nazis doctors.
It was during this time that I had been searching for an unconventional queer historical figure whose life I could present in a new work. Marie-Madeleine’s story immediately led me to choosing her as the figure on which I needed to shine a spotlight. The piece was also a way for me to help bring awareness to a fellow queer artist whose work and life was attempted to be thrown into extinction. As artists, we want to leave a legacy some kind to those who resonate and relate to what we desire to put out there into the world, and it was a true honor to bring an artist of incredibly beautiful work back to contemporary consciousness.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I was always a creative kid, with music and art taking the main focus. During my high school years, I think I was guided into narrowing my focus down to music, and art fell to the wayside. When I was in undergrad majoring in Vocal Performance, I found that I saw the world a little differently than my classmates; I have chromesthesia, where I see color in sound. It was this awareness that something was “not normal” that led me to get neurological testing and discover that I had synesthesia. When I entered graduate school, my classmates and professors where very interested in what the world of colors in my mind looked like according to the music that brought it on, so I decided to get back to painting so I could show the best representation of what I experience was like. It was through the ongoing collaboration of music and art after university that slowly leaked my work out to the public.
I love that I have a several recognizable brands to the many types of work I create. Besides the liminal abstract paintings I create through my synesthesia, I also create digital paintings with a focus on “surreal realism” that are inspired by works created by artificial intelligence; as a queer nonbinary artist, I saw the massive twisting limbs and physical distortions to be representative of what it felt like to be someone whose identity lead them to feeling as if they were sometimes monstrous, and other times beyond the sense of beauty. Through those types of projects, I approach the idea of what it is like to be a queer person whose life was lived under the umbrellas of religious repression and body dysmorphia, as well as what it is like to have never felt the full embrace of any specific community.
I also enjoy creating illustrative design work. As an occultist, I generally approach these works from an intuitive standpoint, and many of them are structured around esoteric symbolism and sigils. I also create an occasional piece of performance art, where I combine ritual with voice and visual ambiance to bring audiences into an ever-changing flux and flow of tension and release. As far as immersive installations go, I very much focus on being able to bring any participants into a place where they can feel safe to process their feelings and head towards healing. My current installation for January 2023 is called “Moon Pendulum,” where the heavy antique pendulum in the middle of the room hangs above a large pendulum board onto which I diagram the lunar cycle and eight processes of grief. It is a way of making the point that grief can swing in many directions, and sometimes is like the New Moon, where it is there but not seen to the naked eye. Other times, it can be like the Full Moon, big, bold, and very present. The idea is to understand the process of grief, that everyone’s process is different, but that we are all dealing and healing together. The installation also includes the singing of lamentations, as well as visual art I created during this concentrated period.
Most of my musical compositions have been vocal and opera, but I have also been able to play the mad scientist with solo instruments and electronics, as well as building sound design. I appreciate that I get to have a foot each in the traditional and experimental spheres when it comes to creating new works and deciding what topics and ideas to use as a foundation for those pieces. I always look forward to the possibilities of being able to compose pieces that challenge me and encourage me to look at their conception from a unique and even unconventional angle. I have composed a queer sequel to Mozart’s “Don Giovanni entitled “The Times Are Nightfall,” as well as an acapella opera that was premiered in Chicago’s Rosehill Cemetery on Halloween Night of 2019 called “The Harbingers.” My opera “The Great God Pan” premiered at the Chopin Theatre in 2018 and won the American Prize in Opera Performance in 2019, and my duodrama “The Priestess of Morphine” has had a lot of critical acclaim in the press, and will have its Australian premiere in January 2023. I have a few projects in the works, including a queer-themed collaboration with saxophonist Nick May, an opera about the scapegoating of Lucifer in regards to the patriarchal repression and oppression of women and marginalized identities, and an opera about the Public Universal Friend, a nonbinary and nonconforming preacher in colonial New England during the First Great Awakening.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
I’m not sure I would call it a “mission” per se, but after looking back now on everything I have been able to do in my career, I would have to say that my driving force as a creative has been to show people that I exist. I think at times it has taken on a political energy, and at other times, a way to simply resonate with people who are in the same boat as I am. Growing up, I never knew anyone like me…no queer people, no synesthetes, and not a lot of creatives, to be honest. Being a creative has been a way to act as a beacon and find other people who can relate to the work in which I create, as well as with who I am as a person. While it is not a selfless goal, I do also have a tendency to be a mama bear, and I love when I can show folks through my work that they are not alone and can always consider me a source of support.
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
I have tried to build my audience organically. I definitely have much to learn about the Metaverse still, but I am pretty grateful to have the community I have following my work and process. I don’t know if I have any useful advice for how to build a social media presence, but I do have a possibly unpopular opinion when it comes to letting people into your world and allowing them to invest in you, and that is to be authentic honest with who you are as a person. Some of the best feedback I have ever received from people is that they appreciate that I express myself without apology or worry as to how anyone can throw it back at me. I speak publicly about my fears, my successes, my anger, my mental health…all of it. What I have personally discovered is that when you put it all out there, no one has can use any of it as ammo against you, and that is what personal power is to me. Have I had people tell me that I shouldn’t be so candid? Of course I have, but I truly do not find anything about my life or creative process worthy of placing in the closet. My skeletons have flesh, and there is a lot of worth and value to how they can help myself and others continue to move forward in this life.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.rossacrean.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/criticalmuse
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ross.crean.7
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rosśa-crean-b250109
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/RossaCrean
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEjQXhWa192BUC4UcDD3xWg
- Other: www.soundcloud.com/Rossa-Crean
Image Credits
#3 Dennis Cahlo #9 & #10 Victor LeJeune