Chicago Avenue Fire Arts Center

Programs: Education: in 2017, our education programs held steady at the previous year's record-breaking enrollment, serving adults and youth of varying backgrounds and abilities in blacksmithing, welding, metal casting, glassworking, neon, and jewelry courses. Through partnerships with other community organizations and charter schools, we taught recently immigrated high school students, homeschooled youth, and lifelong learners. We also maintained long-term programs with the university of mn and the hennepin county home school to provide programs tailored for their clients and students. We manage a robust corps of volunteers that assists us with shop management, fabrication, and administrative efforts to support our education programming and general operations.

public art: cafac served as a training and fabrication facility for six different public art projects in 2017, supporting artists throughout the creation of their works. Three projects were nearing completion at the end of the year for 2018 installation on a new bikeway in north minneapolis. We continue to develop our role as conduit between emerging artists and organizations seeking large-scale work, by providing design expertise, fabrication facilities, project management, and training for artists seeking to build their public art portfolios. We ended the year with contracts in place to work with artists on three new projects in 2018, all of which will utilize our enameling facilities. Developed over the past several years, cafac's enameling studio represents an exciting opportunity for public art in minnesota - enamel on steel results in a durable, uv-resistant, and colorful finish, and our facility is the only one of its kind open to public artists in the upper midwest.

artist access/development: in 2017, we continued to support a thriving learning community of artists through studio access programs. Our core of studio rental artists used our facility to produce work for commission projects and art fairs, while dozens of artists participated in our studio pass at reduced cost program, which allows students to move into working independently in our shop after completing training. Our gallery hosted regular shows of work produced by our students, instructors, and emerging and established artists working in fire arts mediums, and in december we hosted a record-breaking holiday art market featuring 26 artists. We held two open house community events that drew an average of 100 attendees. We also served as a commission referral resource for artists, connecting individuals needing repair, fabrication, and design work to our directory of local craftspeople.