Join us on Saturday, December 14th, from 11 AM to 5 PM (with an exclusive preview from 10 to 11 AM for Fuelers) for the Chicago Avenue Fire Arts Center’s 9th RedHot Art Market!

Located at 3749 Chicago Avenue, Minneapolis, MN, this vibrant celebration of creativity and community unites local artists, artisans, and art enthusiasts in a lively marketplace filled with stunning artwork and handcrafted goods.

Support Our Community: With 30% of all sales going to our scholarship fund, your purchases directly contribute to nurturing the next generation of artists.

Whether you’re an avid collector or just looking for a fun day out, the RedHot Art Market offers something for everyone. Bring your friends and family to experience the magic of art in our community!

For accessibility information head to our accessibility page or feel free to email education and access coordinator, Becca Cerra at Becca.Cerra@cafac.org.

Join us for the Closing Reception and Artist Talk for Heavy Rotation, an Exhibit Celebrating Metal Casting!

Friday, December 6th | 5–8 PM
Doors open at 5 PM, with a group discussion featuring the artists at 6 PM. A dance party will follow!

Come meet the talented artists behind this dynamic medium, learn about the creative processes involved in metal casting, and experience some truly spectacular artwork. We can’t wait to see you there!

Featured artists: Bayani Genereaux, Brighton McCormick, Deetle Nelson, Erin Genereaux, Greg Volker, Jess Night, Lexly Smrekar, Nat Kim, Pete Gierzynski, Samael Leopold-Sullivan, Tamsie Ringler, Wayne E. Potratz, and Woody Stauffer

For accessibility information head to our accessibility page or feel free to email education and access coordinator, Becca Cerra at Becca.Cerra@cafac.org.

Join us for the opening of our next exhibit featuring all things metal casting on Saturday, October 19th, 4-7pm. You will have the chance to meet a fun group of artists who work in this medium, learn a little bit more about the processes involved in the art form and see some spectacular art. We hope to see you!

Join in community as we read about and discuss art history, contemporary art, artists’ inspirations, and more. We're meeting to connect to our local arts community and discuss various topics related to art! Our first book will be Disordered Attention: How We Look at Art and Performance Today by Claire Bishop.

Please RSVP here if you plan on attending! Refreshments will be provided.

This won't be like other book clubs--whether or not you've read (or heard of) this book, we want you there! This book will be a starting point for discussion, but anyone with lived experience as an artist, art lover, or creator will be able to contribute to the conversation.

If you’d like to borrow or purchase the book beforehand, physical copies can be found at:

Hennepin County Libraries

Black Garnet Books - $26.95

Moon Palace Books - $26.95

Magers & Quinn - $24.26

More about the book:

How technology and the politics of attention changed the way we look at art

The ways we encounter contemporary art and performance has changed. How are we expectedto engage with today's diverse practice? Is the old model of close-looking still the ideal, or has itgiven way to browsing, skimming, and sampling?

Across four provocative and insightful essays, art historian and critic Claire Bishop identifies trends in contemporary practice. Charting a critical path through the last three decades, Bishop pinpoints how spectatorship and visual literacy are evolving under the pressures of digital technology.

She explores how researched-based exhibitions have proliferated turning the artist into an investigator or archivist with mixed results. Spatial performance can now involve the artist, dancers, or even the audience as participants, often framed with Instagram in mind. The political event is not longer activated without an understanding of the media that will record and distribute it. The proliferation of works that use modernist architecture is noticeable; but has this become a shorthand for something else?

Disordered Attention is a vital survey of 21st century art, from one of the leading art thinkers of our times.

Join us for a final “hearth to heart” talk and a closing reception with artist nouf saleh about her exhibit “sawad” on Friday, September 27th, 7-8pm.

Artist Statement:

This show is part of my ongoing larger project, Sawad Thakira Albahar Ahmar (Black Memory Red Sea). Through this project, i contend with secrecy, kinship, displacement, separation, and memory in Afro-Arab communities, specifically of the Yemeni Muwalladeen. For me this body of work is an act of resistance to erasure of Afro-Arab communities. Secrecy is a big part of Arab, Yemeni, and Mixed cultures. In my practice, i work with this limitation, thinking creatively about how to depict my family and myself in ways that honor our privacy and our truths. One way this secrecy shows is through language or codified language. I focused on this aspect of the project during the residency at Chicago Ave Fire Arts Center (CAFAC).

During this residency, i wanted to focus on language and phrases that i heard growing up and create them in neon. And then display phrases from Arabic, Amharic and English side by side. However, after starting the residency and spending some time at CAFAC and realizing how close it was to GFS, i changed the word i wanted to create in neon to pay homage to George Floyd. His murder has shifted global consciousness, conversations and language around blackness. 

Artist Bio

i was born in Sana'a and raised in the diaspora.  And currently living in occupied Wahpekute land also known as Minneapolis. i am an interdisciplinary artist, organizer and art administrator. In my practice, i speculate and research collective memory, language, migrations, time, familial relations, absence and change. i work with many materials but primarily with alternative photographic processes, wood work and neon.

It’s that time of year again! Our biannual Open(Hot) House is coming up on Wednesday, September 25th with events starting as early as 5pm, featuring fire arts demos, hands-on artmaking, and recent student work on display. We’ll also be having our very first IRON pour to celebrate our new foundry shed!

Starting at 6:30pm, we’ll have arts demos and hands-on activities, along with refreshments, nouf saleh’s exhibit “sawad” for viewing in the gallery and recent student work on display. The culminating event of the evening—our very first iron pour!—will take place around 7:30pm. You won’t want to miss it!

There's something for everyone at the Open (Hot)House. Come see what we've been up to at CAFAC, enjoy snacks and refreshments, and learn how you can get involved through classes, consignment, commissions, and more!

Join us for a celebration of the end of summer with a mini RedHot Art Market. You will have the opportunity to purchase work from local artists/makers, Mary Ila Duntemann, Dipp’d in Hunnie, Jenn Angell, Lior Perlmuter, Mary Ila Duntemann, Samael Leopold-Sullivan, Sergey Vaynshenk, Woody Stauffer, and introducing Pivot HIGHer, a local career building group with a focus on helping women and non-binary individuals in the skilled trade jobs. We will end the evening with a family friendly movie night in our parking lot. Bring a chair or blanket and a beverage and we will have the movie and popcorn. Save the date for August, 24th, 2pm-9pm. The market will be from 2-7pm and the movie 7:30-9pm.
And as a heads up, our GFS neighbors are having a Black August event around the same time with speakers, food and kids activities. That means Chicago Ave between 37th and 39th St and 38th St between Elliot and Columbus Ave will be closed to vehicles. There will be parking available on the side streets or you can bike your way in.

**ATTENTION!! The opening for "sawad" opening time has changed to 8pm so that the neon can be better appreciated.**

Join us Saturday, July 27th, 8-9:30pm for the opening reception and a chance to celebrate all of the incredible work nouf saleh has done during her residency with us. Save the date for a talk with the artist on Thursday, August 8th, 6-8pm and again on September, 25th, 5pm afterwards, stay for our fall Open (Hot)House from 6:30-9pm.

Congratulations to nouf saleh on the completion of her residency and this beautiful exhibit. It has been a treasure having you and we can't wait to see where your new skills take you.