

Telluride Arts proudly presents The Heart of the Arts Telluride — a vibrant group exhibition showcasing the work of 17 local and regional artists. This dynamic show brings together painting, photography, ceramics, jewelry, books, and more, reflecting the depth and diversity of our creative community.
This edition also inaugurates our brand-new Makers Market, featuring handcrafted ceramics, jewelry, and literature that celebrate artistry in everyday life.
Visitors will also have the chance to experience the projects of two TAAG 2025 grant recipients, Jon Herreros de Tejada and John Kirk Drogsvold.
Location: Telluride Arts HQ - 135 West Pacific Avenue, Telluride, CO 81435
Please click the boxes below to learn more about THE ARTISTs AND EXPLORE THEIR CREATIONS!
Visual Artists
Jon Herreros de Tejada recently completed his TAAG 2025 grant project, a focused exploration of painting and new materials in Telluride. Over six months of studio work and community engagement, Jon created a powerful new artwork inspired by the natural beauty of the San Juan Mountains.
This final piece reflects both his deep connection to the region and his renewed commitment to his artistic practice. By sharing the work with the community, Jon highlights how landscape, creativity, and place intertwine to inspire resilience and artistic growth in Telluride.
John Kirk Drogsvold is a local artist and designer whose work bridges art, technology, and ecology. With a background in computational design, digital fabrication, and music, Kirk creates innovative projects that blend advanced techniques with authenticity and collaboration.
Supported by this grant, he is developing a line of wall- and ceiling-mounted plant propagation stations crafted with laser-cut and 3D-printed components. Designed for both plant enthusiasts and makers, these pieces merge functionality with beauty while promoting sustainability.
Marla Meridith is a multidisciplinary artist based in Telluride, CO. Known for her vibrant paintings that blend bold colors, layered textures, and fashion-infused symbolism. Influenced by editorial aesthetics, and pop culture, her paintings and mixed-media pieces move between ethereal dreamscapes and sharp graphic statements. Marla has always had a love for painting, after graduating Syracuse University, she worked as a textile designer, creating collections for Disney and collaborating with leading global brands. That background infuses her mixed-media work with a mix of bold & delicate brush strokes and defined line work. Her thirst for global travel inspires her works that evoke the spirit of Matisse and Andy Warhol. Her paintings explore power, femininity, and the interplay of nature, luxury and pattern.
Doris Tinsley Nadel paints with passion the expressions of her life experiences with positive negative space, color, form and texture. Her paintings illuminate positive vibe expressing powerful energy with vibrant colors and strong sculptured brush strokes.
Celeste was born and raised in upstate New York where she began her art career living in a community of artists in the Adirondack Mountains. She spent her early years judging the subtle shifts in color between grades of the finest dark maple syrup, on her family’s off-grid maple syrup farm. This love for the play of light and color and the feeling of being at the center of a solitary forest is at the core of her work as an oil painter today. While a largely self taught artist, Celeste studied drawing and painting at the New Mexico Art League and Watts Atelier. She holds a BA in anthropology, mountain geography and linguistics from the University of Montana, and an BSN in nursing from Montana State University.
While a hint of an accent reveals Maryland roots, Colorado has been Brazee’s home since 2001. Returning to college as a “late-bloomer,” she now holds two graduate degrees, one in environmental science with an emphasis in ecosystems and the other in visual art with an emphasis in painting. This unusual combination of interests has profoundly influenced her work, keeping it suspended somewhere between recognizable reality and imaginary narrative. Brazee’s primary love is painting; through it, she investigates human relationships with the natural world, its creatures, others, and themselves. She gathers photographs that she has taken and those from public archives, creating collages as references for her paintings. Through this process, she makes social commentary with a sprinkling of humor, a nip of nonsense, a dash of self-deprecation, and a dose of deeper meaning.
Hailey was born and raised in Telluride, and she draws much of her inspiration from her San Juan upbringing. She is drawn to surrealist mountain illustrations and bold color pallets. She is keen on finding the fun (and likely the floral) in her work. Hailey focuses primarily on digital art, but has been known to dabble in other mediums. Another one of her creative outlets is fashion, most recently working as the Lead Stylist for the 2025 Telluride AIDS Benefit Fashion Show. Hailey graduated with a BA in International Affairs from University of Colorado - Boulder and has a certification in Graphic and Digital Design from Parsons School of Design.
Nestled in the quiet rhythm of a mountain town, Kristen captures life through a lens—both film and digital. With photography as both passion and practice, her work is rooted in the textures of everyday moments and the raw beauty of the natural world that surrounds her. Kristen’s film photography brings a nostalgic, tactile quality to otherwise fleeting scenes, while digital work allows for an immediacy and versatility that complements her eye for composition and light.
Micheline Klagsbrun is a visual artist whose multi-media work focuses on transformation and displacement. She studied in Paris with Alfredo Echeverria and at the Corcoran with William Newman and Gene Davis. She has exhibited widely, and is in private collections nationally as well as in Europe and the Middle East. Solo and group exhibits in Washington D.C. include the Katzen Museum at American University, Arena Stage, gallery plan b, Studio Gallery, Exhibit9 Gallery, Goldman Gallery, the Embassies of Finland and Venezuela, Smith Center for the Healing Arts, Covington and Burling, Adah Rose Gallery, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art; elsewhere, Macy Gallery (New York City), William Ris Gallery (Cape May NJ), MiXX Projects and Gallery 81435 (Telluride CO), Aswan, Egypt and Delhi, India. Her work is represented by William Ris Gallery (Jamesport NY) and Studio Gallery (DC).
The love of natural environments that brought me to live in Telluride 50 years ago, along with a desire to recreate or “re-create” myself during retirement. In 2008 I ventured out Plein Air with a friend/painting teacher in Baja California Sur, and have been painting ever since.
Nature’s magnificence in different weather and lighting, excites and inspires me to capture, recreate yet translate, honor and celebrate her and the moods she invokes. A strong painting transports me to another time, place, and emotional state; this is my aim.
I have been blessed with the opportunity to learn from, and am grateful to many master painters, most notably John Comer, Jill Carver, Katherine Galbraith, Rita Pacheco. and Kevin Macpherson.
Website: https://www.leslierosscraneart.com/
Instagram: @lrcrane
Ingrid Oliphant is a savant artist whose creative journey began unexpectedly in 2022, echoing her earlier awakening to the capacity to heal through touch in 2009. Drawing from her work as a shaman, Ingrid channels what she calls the "Language of Creation" into her paintings, offering viewers a deeply mystical and multi-sensory experience.
With over 20 years of painting and collecting tribal art, Margaret’s work reflects the profound influence of tribal art on Modernist movements and her appreciation for the interplay of abstract expressionism and tribal aesthetics. Her work is held in numerous private collections across the United States.
Karen Kokjer has been passionate about drawing and painting since childhood, where early exposure to art included classes at the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City and inspiring art teachers throughout her education. While minoring in painting and graphics in college, she also majored in Chemistry, balancing her artistic creativity with technical expertise.
Joanie has been known in the publishing world for over 25 years, for portraiture as well as fine art. Creating art and clothing that is imbued with unconditional love brings her life meaning.
Brittany Miller mixed media creations blend fine pencil drawings with three-dimensional objects to craft thought-provoking shadow box displays.
CERAMICS
Domi Bruneau is a creative from Chile. She has a background in Architecture and Landscape Architecture, which has led her to work on projects from urban planning and productive landscape design to mapping and illustration design. For the past couple of years, pottery has been her main creative media outlet, bringing subtle elements from nature into her pieces and lately also introducing illustrations with a pop art feel to her work. Domi fell in love with Telluride in 2008 and has lived in the region since 2016, actively involved with various local organizations striving for justice, equity, and belonging of our immigrant community members. Currently, she works at the library, doing outreach and bringing bilingual programming to youth and families.
Arline Baker is a ceramic artist based in Telluride, Colorado. She is currently focusing on non functional tile work that explores color, design and surface texture. Arline draws inspiration from the tactile and transformative nature of clay and the natural beauty of her surroundings. Though ceramics remains her central passion, Arline’s creative practice extends into fiber arts, printmaking and encaustic painting. These pursuits offer fresh perspective and inform her sense of color, structure and surface. A former art teacher, Arline carries forward the values of curiosity, attentiveness and joyful exploration into everything she creates.
Sebnem’s unique sculptures feature elements that stand as individual pieces, thoughtfully assembled into designs and forms that defy traditional antecedents, offering a fresh and original artistic perspective.