Denise began her career as an artist, after majoring in painting at Ohio University, doing large murals for businesses and interior designers. She created an artists clearing house called “Art Solutions” in 1986 to pair up art lovers with artists for site specific projects. As a result, interior designers used Art Solutions for murals, faux finishes and customized wall art that can be found in hospitals, churches, offices, homes, and businesses all over the eastern part of the United States. She has been represented at The Cleveland Airport juried show, local Cleveland galleries, and Lucas Van Leyden Gallery in Boston. Two of her works were chosen by the Ohio Arts Council to be on loan to the Ohio Governor's Mansion. Telep was tapped by ABC's popular Extreme Home Makeover tv show to create mural work for the series, which led to doing pre-production illustrations for Fremantle Productions for various “makeover” series. Returning to site specific projects, Telep has created thousands of residential, school and commercial decorative murals for notable clients like, Hospice of the Western Reserve, St. James Hospital in Chicago, Sifco Industries, Trusted Sec Security, Acumen Security, The Cleveland Clinic, St. Leo's Church in Ridgway, Penn.,, True Value Hardware Headquarters, The Veteran's Administration, Chillicothe, Ohio, and Aitheras Aviation, to name a few.

Denise Ivey remains active in coordinating public participation community murals, and engaging gifted students with private lessons in the Cleveland Ohio area. Her artistic focus is directed to “gallery sized” paintings depicting social concerns and realistic landscape painting with an abstract flare.