2026 HAHA Artists
Claudio Acuna
PUERTO MONTT, CHILE
Cathy Barber, Tim barber, Brooke Smith
TELLURIDE, COLORADO
Aileen Martinez & Jef Caine
PHOENIX, ARIZONA
Kerry Cesen
DENVER, COLORADOI am an Industrial Designer, Artist, and Teacher with a deep passion for exploring the possibilities of paper. Beginning with the study and perfection of Origami, I have developed my own techniques that have allowed me to create works exhibited in numerous artistic projects. My practice combines urban art with site-specific interventions, fostering participatory experiences that engage communities and establish a unique visual language, particularly in paper sculpture.
I hold a degree in Industrial Design from DUOC UC in Santiago, Chile, and a Master’s in Design of Cultural Spaces and Experiences from the Barcelona School of Design. Over the years, I have designed and created public art projects, participated in international residencies, and received awards recognizing my contributions. I also teach at the University of Los Lagos and the School of Architecture in San Sebastian, sharing my expertise in materials, design, and art in public spaces.
We are a small group of humans who are family, some literal and some figurative, with a shared tendency to say yes to creative ideas. After each finding our own way to Telluride more than 15 years ago, our lives became connected through friendship, family, and community. Our work lives at the intersection of play, care, and curiosity, with a focus on creating joyful, hands-on experiences that invite people in. Drawn to collaboration and immersive art, we care deeply about making spaces that feel light-hearted, whimsical, and welcoming.
Aileen Martinez is a Phoenix-based, Chicana artist who creates colorful drawings of places around the Valley and the City of Phoenix. The artist chooses to work in social spaces such as cafes and restaurants. These locations act as her public studio. She also works with the public to make special commissions, drawing people's homes and places that they find special and dear. Martinez has a bachelor's degree in Art Therapy from Southern Adventist University in Chattanooga, Tennessee. She believes in art's ability to be an expressive outlet that has the power to build empathy and bridge communities. Fauxto Booth is a collaborative project with Jef Caine. Phoenix based illustrator and animator, Jef Caine is always striving to use his powers for good. Special interests include veganism, bike riding, and existential dread.
Kerry Cesen is a Colorado-based muralist, designer, and public artist with more than 17 years of professional experience creating large-scale murals and site-specific public art. His work exists at the intersection of art, design, science, and education, using visual language as a tool to inspire exploration, communication, and connection. Working primarily in mural painting and public art, Kerry creates immersive visual experiences that transform environments while translating complex ideas into engaging and
accessible artwork. His practice is driven by curiosity and informed by research, drawing inspiration from nature, biodiversity, ecosystem health, science, chemistry, astronomy, local history, and the interconnected systems that shape our world. By translating research into compelling visual narratives, he seeks to create moments of wonder that inspire learning, spark curiosity, and deepen meaningful relationships between people and place.
Kerry's artwork can be found in public spaces throughout Colorado and across the United States. He has collaborated with municipalities, cultural organizations, schools, businesses, and private partners to create artwork that celebrates community identity while inspiring curiosity, reflection, and discovery.
Michael Fortenberry
NEW YORK
Chanelle Hicks
TELLURIDE, COLORADO
Paola Ibarra
MEXICO CITY, MEXICO
Elizabeth Lillian LaBarge Paige
NORFOLK, NEW YORKMichael Fortenberry is an interdisciplinary artist and art educator based in the Hudson Valley. He received his BFA at University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, WA and is currently working on his Master of Fine Arts at SUNY New Paltz with an emphasis in sculpture. Michael has exhibited work throughout the United States with works in private collections on display in Washington, Colorado, and New York. He just concluded his residence at Glasshouse Art.Life.Lab resulting in a permanent outdoor installation and had work published in the Art and America Guide in the Spring of 2022. Michael is exhibiting at the Rosekill Art Farm, Unison Art Center, and beginning to install at the Kaatsbaan Cultural Center opening mid-May. Currently, he is the Instructor of Record of Basic and Introduction sculpture courses at the State University of New York New Paltz.
Michael manipulates raw materials, allowing for its affordances, potentials and limits to guide his engagement. Captivated by creating objects that appear to be in constant movement through rigid and organic forms of nature, Michael creates a meditative experience by emulating the intricate patterns seen all around us.
Chanelle Hicks is a local Telluride artist. By day she runs the only frame shop within 60 miles, “Frame Telluride” and chases after her little dog Scout Bakula. All spare moments are dedicated to crafting and creating. Often moonlighting as a props master for Telluride Theatre. Chanelle
received her BFA from M.I.C.A. in 2020 at the height of the pandemic majoring in Interdisciplinary Sculpture ie: metal, wood, and fiber fabrication while working in exhibits fabrication at the National Natural History Museum for the Smithsonian for several years beforemoving back to Telluride. Leaving behind massive shops and equipment and left somewhat bereft with the question of how do you create art when all your tools and space are gone? As an artist Chanelle firmly believes that art is for everyone regardless of skill or training. However, art and especially craft can be incredibly wasteful. Sustainability is always at the foreground of Chanelle’s creative space. Many of the materials that are used in this and previous exhibitions are made from recycled trash or are as sustainable as possible; cardboard, old toys, fabric, even holiday decorations. Anything can become art if you’re weird enough, the important thing is to have fun creating.
Paola Ibarra is a Mexican artist, based in Mexico City, who creates colorful participatory installations that invite people to interact, reflect, and play. Her work focuses on creating conversations among strangers, encouraging human connection, and generating fun shared experiences, often transforming simple materials into immersive spaces where the audience becomes the creators.
Liza currently teaches as an Adjunct Professor of the Arts at St. Lawrence University while balancing her Arts Educator position at the North Country Children’s Museum in Upstate NY. She is dedicated to presenting drawing as a fine art form. Her mastered materials include charcoal and soft pastel, with a visual focus on narrative portraiture. Recently, she's expanded her drawing practice to include hands-on elements designed for PLAY! She presents drawing in the form of interactive installations that merge 3D and 2D optical illusions designed for intergenerational audiences.
Kiki Miklavcic
PARK CITY, UTAH
Wil Natzel
OWATONNA, MN
Lexi Richey
WESTMINSTER, COLORADO
Wendy Roloson
TELLURIDE, COLORADO
KiKi (Kelsey) is an atmosphere creator living in the mountains of Utah. She was born and raised in Tarpon Springs, Florida and begn her professional career in marketing for the luxury home industry of Southwest Florida. For a brief moment in time, many moons ago, she lived in Telluride, and it’s held a special place in her heart ever since. Before planting roots in Park City, Kelsey built both a creative agency and a school bus to live and travel in—adventures that brought her to some of the most beautiful landscapes in the country and some of the most meaningful people in her life. These experiences had a profound impact on how she views the world around her and continue to shape the spirit of her work.
Depending on the time and space, you’ll find her identifying as a graphic designer, interior stylist, art director, illustrator, dreamer, and beyond. She’s currently immersed in inspiration pulled from color gradients, patterns, organic movement, shapes, vibrations, and soothing textures.
Her enthusiasm for fun and whimsy is contagious. At the core of everything she creates is a desire to spark curiosity and bring people into moments of joy, wonder, and connection.
Wil Natzel is a gay artist, designer, and graduate of the Cranbrook Academy of Art with a Master of Architecture, the cradle of American design. His work straddles the line between art and architecture, drawing inspiration from architectural sources, cultural frameworks, and natural phenomena. Through his public art, environments, and abstract objects, he explores the relativity of individual experiences, reshaping how people see the world around them. His work integrates
color, sound, light, and new technologies to foster reflection, participation, and dialogue. Wil’s portfolio spans private commissions and public projects for the Institute for Public Architecture, Twin Cities Pride, SooVAC, and Gamut Gallery, with projects in New York, Minneapolis, Saint Paul, and Dallas. His most recent work, Superfluity, is a pop-up queer-themed installation developed during his fellowship at the Institute for Public Architecture on Governors Island, NYC. Wil’s work draws on elements inspired by the queer landscape, integrating experimental structures that evoke both personal and collective identity. His work has been featured in Wired, PBS MN Original, and other leading design platforms, and he has served as a visiting architecture critic at institutions like the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the University of Minnesota. Deeply shaped by his identity as a gay artist, Wil’s practice is rooted in creating experiences that celebrate diversity, connect communities, and amplify marginalized voices.
Wendy Roloson is a conceptual furniture artist. She is inspired by the idea of creating evocative pieces of furniture by repurposing familiar items. What is more commonplace in our homes then a table and a newspaper? By strategically combining these two objects, Wendy is able to create both a functional and dynamic piece of art.
Wendy believes that art should be fully integrated into our lives in a more personal way. Art no longer need be seen only a stand alone piece but rather as having the potential to be serviceable part of our every day lives. Her pieces strive to interact with their users through both the familiar and the thought provoking. They mark a point in time, as well as, the complexity of the time.
Kyle Singer
DENVER, COLORADO
Michael Simonelli
CLINTON CORNERS, NY
TREE DAWN LIGHTING
TELLURIDE, COLORADOKyle Vincent Singer was born in Tacoma, Washington, in 1990.
He graduated from Eastern Illinois University with a Bachelor of Arts in 2013 and a Master’s in Studio Art in 2014. He received his Master of Fine Arts in 2018 with a focus in Drawing at Colorado State University, where he was the recipient of the CSU Highest Achievement in Visual Arts in 2017. Kyle Vincent Singer describes his art as “Candy Coated Abjection” and “Metabolic.” He uses art to process and cope with overstimulation and consumer culture. Singer digests everyday materials to manifest unique sculptural forms. These forms often reflect an unconventional blend of biological and cultural iconography, always maintaining a sense of the importance of material and process. Singer’s works are characterized by vibrant neon growths, rich textures, and striking sensual qualities. Through exploring the interplay between themes of contrast, Singer invites his audience to experience the tension between opposites—like attraction and repulsion, or beauty and disgust. By nature of the artist’s role in the process—through sourcing found objects and materials as well as through playful interaction in the studio—Singer’s sculptures contain metabolic and psychic energy related to the body and its role in consumerism. While the end result is somewhere between nature and culture, either way it's organic.
Michael T. Simonelli is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, producer, sound designer, and audio consultant working in and around New York's Hudson Valley. His recent compositions explore generative instruments as a means of producing and iterating raw material and ways of processing these collected sounds into constructive narratives. Two recent albums Umori (2024) and Heart Hz (2022) exemplify this approach. As a collaborator, recent works include The Other Fantasies for Extinction Listening Party, a 25-minute audio meditation with Rachel Garber Cole that explores emotional responses to the climate crisis. The Accessible Instrument, an interdisciplinary collaboration with sculptor Michael Fortenberry is a collection of object-instruments that explore mindfulness through somatic engagement. In addition, Michael leads the Audio Engineering team at Charts & Leisure, a collective of internet-native strategists, where he’s written music for Chanel, The Future of Storytelling, The Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, The American Chemical Society, The Markup, Longreads, and IMDb among others. He has appeared on numerous albums over the past decade both as a producer and multi-instrumentalist and is a graduate of Hamilton College (B.A. in Music) and UMASS Amherst (M.M. in Music Theory and Composition).
Tree's love affair with stage rigging began while working with Sesame Street Live as Head Prop Manager. She honed her technical lighting skills for all types of events while on tour. After 10 years as Assistant Technical Director at Colorado College, Tree began to focus exclusively on lighting. In 2012, she took on the position of Technical Director at The Palm Theater, located in Telluride.
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