2020 Artist & Entertainers
Jesse The Juggler
Jesse has been performing and teaching juggling and unicycle for 15 years. A Portland ME native, he learned how to juggle in the second grade. He’s an avid circus artist, always working on improving his craft. Jesse recently spent a year in Little Rock, AR where he worked as a teacher and performer with the Arkansas Circus School. Additionally, Jesse is also a performer with The Durango Circus. Jesse is also an advocate for health and wellness and a talented musician.
Nate Harris
Pyr Arts creates spectacular, unique fire art for patios, backyards, businesses, and festivals. His art is inspired by travel to awesome landscapes. He is a self-taught artist, initially motivated to design and build metal pieces after experiencing the art at Burning Man in 2004. In addition to utilizing steel, copper, and bronze in his sculptures, Nate often incorporates interactive flame effects. He is currently a Senior Fabricator and Designer at an ornamental and architectural metal fabrication shop, where he helps create award-winning, high-end custom pieces.
Derek "Vincent Vega"
Derek is fire performer out of Crested Butte. He was inspired by the annual vinotok celebration that occurs during the autumnal equinox. Derek focuses his energy on the dragon staff. Fire spinning in the mountains gives him a great balance between winter activities and summer activities. Derek enjoys inspiring others to follow their own performance aspirations.
Dave Mechtly
Dave is a Denver-based artist, fabricator, master electrician, musician, welder, tinkerer, father, and general poker of the bear. He has contributed to the Colorado art community with large sculptural works for nearly two years, drawing inspiration from culturally meaningful symbols. Pictured here, Perfect Heart which can be viewed at the Transfer Warehouse along with Strictly Platonic.
Kristin Wesley
As a community based public artist in Phoenix, AZ, Kristin Wesley uses paintings, assemblages and murals to connect with communities, invigorate spaces and inspire others. She uses recognizable, repurposed metal components to create sculptural assemblages and fire features, implying a history told through the distinctive voice of the materials. Described as dynamic, colorful and rhythmic, Kristin’s work often employs biomorphic imagery, utilizing gardens and plants as a metaphor for life. From her studio on Historic Grand Avenue, Kristin weaves modalities together to create multi-media art and experiences for galleries, collectors, events and the public.
Nick Rice
Nick lives in the backcountry of Arizona with his two home-schooled children. This homesteader lives off grid in his dream house which he built with help from family and friends. See his flaming vintage truck in the Mountain Village. (It’s a 4x4 Chevy frame and engine with the 1935 car on top.)
Viele Maloy
Viele is a fire performer based in Crested Butte, CO. She finds freedom expressing herself through movement and loves sharing her flame with others through performance and teaching. She has been performing with her fire fans and dragon staff at festivals and private events all across the U.S. for the past five years.
Vera Sizintseva
Vera is a Russian circus and flow performer based in Denver, CO. She has spent six years learning and teaching flow arts, her favorite prop is dragon staff. Vera will be performing as well as teaching free workshops at the library for the Festival. She loves performing and teaching dragon staff.
Telluride Dance Collective
Telluride Dance Collective is a joyful, supportive community of dancers in Telluride, CO, practicing and performing authentic, expressive movement.
This year would have been their second year collaborating with Homestead Circus Productions for the Friday, Dec. 4 show, but it had to be canceled for Covid safety. It will happen in the spring of 2021.
Rikki Morehouse
Rikki is a passionate and dedicated performer, teacher, and designer of things. She is also a contortionist-hand balancing-aerialist clown, and one of the creators of SacCirque, a sacramento based collective of circus and flow artists (saccirque.com). She currently lives in Paonia, CO where she has formed a performance organization called Homestead Circus Productions with her partner Dominic Del Signore. You can read more about Rikki here: http://www.rikkimorehouse.com/
Homestead Circus Productions
Homestead Circus Productions is a Colorado-based company focused on evolving circus entertainment, culture, and education, on the western slope while pushing the boundaries of contemporary circus everywhere. This is their second year collaborating with Telluride Dance Collective for the Friday, Dec. 4 show at the Palm Theater.
Charlie Vierhout
Artist, Charles Vierhout creates complex computing system for a living, and makes art for a release. He will be showcasing his 10-foot tall street clock, entitled “Our Time”, which juxtaposes a contemporary take on “time” with a more historical view of street clocks. The hands move both forward and backward in the clock face. A pendant allowing people to select multiple styles of flame blasts controls the tower flame effects. Inside the tower are four computers to control LEDs, the hands, and flame effects, as well as four custom built gearboxes. 1,300 LEDs are also inside the installation, which run an ever-changing color display.
Dominic Del Signore
Circus performer Dominic Del Signore shares the art of object manipulation in western Colorado. He has recently displayed his acts at Carbondale’s Mountain Fair and the Telluride Fire Festival. As Co-Founder of Homestead Circus Productions with his partner RIkki Morehouse, Dominic practices a multiplicity of skill toys. Constantly expanding upon the visually elusive practice of balance and isolation, he brings an element of mystery and playfulness to all his performances. Photo by Scott London.
Jenna Wirtz
Jenna has been performing with fire fans, dragon staff, and poi at festivals for many years with Dance of the Sacred Fire. She is an annual participant at Telluride Fire Festival! Come watch Jenna perform Friday and Sunday at the Transfer Warehouse and Saturday in Mountain Village Center.
Niel Ringstad
Originally from NYC, Niel is distinguished as a 31-year Telluride local, living for his first 10-years in a ski-bum shack of 72 square-feet. Though a graphic designer at heart and an accomplished painter, Niel has graciously built two towering sculptural works (out of clean, salvaged lumber) for the Festival, which have been the cornerstones of the Fire on the Mountain in 2016 and the BIG Bad Burn in 2017. We welcome him back this year again as one of the trio of artists for this year’s ever-expanding Sculpture Garden at the top of Lift 7.