YOUR AD HERE »

Breckenridge Creative Arts ignites inaugural Fire Arts Festival

Special to the Daily
Special to the Daily |

Fire Arts Festival schedule

Unless otherwise noted, all events are free and take place on the Arts District Campus, located on the northwest corner of Ridge Street and Washington Avenue. For more information on Breckenridge Creative Arts or the Fire Arts Festival, visit http://www.breckcreate.org.

Friday, Jan. 30

6:30-8:30 p.m. — Live music with Krooked Drivers, Thaw Lounge, Riverwalk Center

Saturday, Jan. 31

Open studio — Making of fire sculptures, Orion Fredericks, Robert Whyte House

5-8 p.m. — Fire sculptures of Orion Fredericks and Jamie Vaida on exhibit

5-8 p.m. — DJ Chris Diablo performs

5-8 p.m. — Soy candles demonstration, Bernadette Foley, Fuqua Livery Stable

5-8 p.m. — Encaustic demonstration, Marco Montanari, Tin Shop

6-8 p.m. — Raku firing, Chris Hosbach and Todd Brower, Kiln Yard

7:30-9 p.m. — Live music with The Yawpers, Thaw Lounge, Riverwalk Center

Thursday, Feb. 5

Open studio — Making of fire sculptures, Orion Fredericks, Robert Whyte House

5-8 p.m. — Fire sculptures of Orion Fredericks and Jamie Vaida on exhibit

5-8 p.m. — DJ Stretch performs

5-8 p.m. — Lampworking demonstration, Todd Brower, Hot Shop

5-8 p.m. — Soy candles demonstration, Bernadette Foley, Fuqua Livery Stable

5-8 p.m. — Encaustic demonstration, Marco Montanari, Tin Shop

6-7:30 p.m. — Live music with Cody Crump, Thaw Lounge, Riverwalk Center

8-9:30 p.m. — Live music with Mark’s Midnight Carnival Show, Thaw Lounge, Riverwalk Center

Friday, Feb. 6

Open studio — Making of fire sculptures, Orion Fredericks, Robert Whyte House

1-5 p.m. — Woodfiring, Chris Hosbach and Jenn Cram, Kiln Yard

5-8 p.m. — Fire sculptures of Orion Fredericks and Jamie Vaida on exhibit

5-8 p.m. — DJ Evasive performs

5-8 p.m. — Encaustic demonstration, Victoria Eubanks, Hot Shop

5-8 p.m. — Essential oils demonstration, Erica Ragusa, Fuqua Livery Stable

5-8 p.m. — Encaustic demonstration, Marco Montanari, Tin Shop

6-7:30 p.m. — Live music with Grim & Darling, Thaw Lounge, Riverwalk Center

8-9:30 p.m. — Live music with Sphynx, Thaw Lounge, Riverwalk Center

Saturday, Feb. 7

Open studio — Making of fire sculptures, Orion Fredericks, Robert Whyte House

Noon to 3 p.m. — Encaustic surfaces workshop, Victoria Eubanks, Hot Shop; $75, includes all materials

5-8 p.m. — Fire sculptures of Orion Fredericks and Jamie Vaida on exhibit

5-8 p.m. — DJ Chrissy D performs

5-8 p.m. — Silversmithing demonstration, Martha Peterson, Hot Shop

5-8 p.m. — Encaustic demonstration, Marco Montanari, Tin Shop

6-8 p.m. — Raku firing, Chris Hosbach and Todd Brower, Kiln Yard

6-7:30 p.m. — Live music with Brotha James, Thaw Lounge, Riverwalk Center

8-9:30 p.m. — Live music with Whiskey Blanket, Thaw Lounge, Riverwalk Center

Starting Saturday, Jan. 31, Breckenridge Creative Arts will host the inaugural Fire Arts Festival, produced to celebrate and complement the 25th year of the Budweiser International Snow Sculpture Championships in Breckenridge.

The multiday exhibition of fire and light runs through Saturday, Feb. 7, and features burning sculptures, pyrotechnical effects and other spark-filled attractions at the newly opened Breckenridge Arts District.

“We felt that introducing the Fire Arts Festival this year was a great way to support and enhance the (International Snow Sculpture Championships’) landmark anniversary and also provided us with an opportunity to showcase our new Arts District campus for the thousands of guests coming to see the snow sculptures,” said Robb Woulfe, president and CEO of Breckenridge Creative Arts. “We’ve curated a weeklong program around a fire and ice theme, which promises plenty of entertainment of both the hot and cold varieties.”



FIRE ARTISTS



Throughout the festival week, the Arts District’s outdoor kiln yard will be lit with raku- and wood-firing demonstrations, and the indoor studios will be aglow with flame- and heat-related demonstrations, including candle making with Bernadette Foley, silversmithing with Martha Peterson-Glomb, encaustic painting with Victoria Eubanks and Marco Montanari, lampworking glasswork with Todd Brower and more.

Highlights include large- and small-scale pieces by nationally known fire sculptors that will be illuminated in and around the campus, including flammable metal works by Orion Fredericks and Jamie Vaida. Fredericks will be bringing his fire sculpture “Gillaoptourous Corvus,” or “Gilly” for short, as part of the Fire Arts Festival.

“‘Gilly’ is a culmination of two younger pieces that I made 15 years ago, called ‘The Twins,’ and ‘Gilly’ is its parent, one of its parents,” Fredericks said. “‘Gilly’ is made from about 10 years of accumulated stainless steel scrap from previous sculptures that I’ve made, at least 10 previous different sculptures, that I put together to form this piece.”

Like other flammable metal works, “Gilly” is a handcrafted creature that “speaks” through the personality of the fire, which is controlled and manipulated by the artist throughout the exhibition.

“You can control that speech with a control panel, and I can play the voice like music, it has a musical personality but with fire. The fire is the audio, as well as the visual component,” the artist said. “Mostly, I would say I’m performing with the piece. It’s an inanimate object, and it comes alive for a short period of time while I’m at the control panel, and when I step away, it recedes into its dormant state.”

Vaida’s work showcases many types of metal, such as copper and stainless steel, but he also often incorporates recycled or reused metals and found objects into his projects. He begins simply, with discarded metal, often from a scrap yard. He looks for beauty and shape in a given piece in its raw form and then twists and bends the metal to bring out the full potential hidden within the material. Vaida will be showcasing his elegant fire flowers as part of the Fire Arts Festival.

“I think my piece and many of the fire pieces that will be on display are good examples of the level of craft that’s offered at this facility, the understanding of fire and how to put things together and different elements of metals,” Fredericks said. “So I think it could almost be looked at as a cumulative result of some of the creative effort that’s already here, bringing their skills to the community in terms of teaching and open workshops.”

MUSIC AND MORE

On the evenings of Saturday, Jan. 31, and Thursday, Feb. 5, through Saturday, Feb. 7, a lineup of guest DJs from the Front Range, including Chris Diablo, Stretch, Evasive and Chrissy D, will spin sizzling, open-air sets in the Arts District plaza, while visitors are treated to sculpture ignitions throughout the night, along with daring displays of fire breathing, flame throwing and other incendiary acts by the artists of Lumina Entertainment.

Visitors are encouraged to attend the spectacle of the Fire Arts Festival before or after viewing the icy marvels featured at ISSC, located just down the street in the area around the Blue River Plaza and the Tiger Dredge Parking Lot.

In addition to the fiery activities on the Arts District campus, the Riverwalk Center will turn into a cozy warming lounge called Thaw, complete with free weekend concerts throughout ISSC and the Fire Arts Festival. The musical lineup features a contemporary mix of winter grooves by Krooked Drivers on Friday, Jan. 30; The Yawpers on Saturday, Jan. 31; Cody Crump and Mark’s Midnight Carnival Show on Thursday, Feb. 5; Grim & Darling and Sphynx on Friday, Feb. 6; and Brotha James and Whiskey Blanket on Saturday, Feb. 7.

Presented by Breckenridge Creative Arts, all activities for the inaugural Fire Arts Festival take place in studios and outdoor spaces in the Breckenridge Arts District, located on the corner of South Ridge Street and East Washington Avenue, just off of Main Street in downtown Breckenridge.

The new Thaw lounge is located in the Riverwalk Center at 150 W. Adams Ave., a few blocks from the Arts District campus and directly adjacent to the carving activities of ISSC.


Support Local Journalism

Support Local Journalism

As a Summit Daily News reader, you make our work possible.

Summit Daily is embarking on a multiyear project to digitize its archives going back to 1989 and make them available to the public in partnership with the Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection. The full project is expected to cost about $165,000. All donations made in 2023 will go directly toward this project.

Every contribution, no matter the size, will make a difference.