Back by popular demand, Red Hot Workshops are free hands-on arts workshops in the gardens of Stevens Square-Loring Heights, facilitated by teaching artists.

These workshops are sign-up required and first-come-first-serve. Sign up here!

We are entangled in a multitude of threads on social media every day, but rarely do we find ourselves in threads of communication that are not fleeting; that make us feel connected to the people around us or that bring a ray of delight to our days.

The workshop sets out to weave threads of connection by embracing the art of the postcard. Postcards are mini canvases that inspire artistic expression and are messengers of joy, surprise, kindness, and care. They are an ideal medium to weave threads of connection into the fabric of our urban communities and neighborhoods.

In this workshop, you will embrace your inner artist and be inspired to kindle human connection through postcard art. Together we will explore how this year's Red Hot Art theme can inspire postcard art that sparks creativity and strengthens the fabric of humanity in our neighborhood. We will then use the ideas we collected to make cards that will amuse, enchant, energize, and delight both the maker and the recipient of the postcard art.

Postcard templates, stamps, addresses for postcard recipients as well as a selection of prompts and artistic materials will be provided but participants should feel free to bring their own material and ideas to the workshop. The intention is to create up to five postcards per participant which we will collectively bring to the mailbox on the intersection of Franklin Avenue and Nicollet Ave (the only mailbox that is almost in the Steven Square neighborhood) at the end of our time together.

Esther Seha is a political scientist, educator, mentor, and baker concerned with social justice and cake. Esther was born and raised in Germany to an American father and a German mother who taught her the love of life, the importance of being a learner, and the indispensability of community. After receiving her doctorate in political science and being a visiting postdoctoral researcher at Boston University, Seha decided to transplant herself to her father’s native home state of Minnesota

to explore what being an activist thinker around food and social justice could look like.

As an artistic thinker Esther’s approach to teaching is rooted in curiosity for life and people. She firmly believes that art is everywhere around us and within each of us and that creative imagination can help us heal and wrestle with the beauties and challenges of life.

Seha loves black clothes and looking at the sky. She is smitten by round things and small things hidden from plain sight. She finds the bicycle to be the most honest and invigorating form of human transportation. Her trinity muses are dictionaries, encyclopedias, and walking through the world with open eyes and heart. To view samples of Esther's art and learn more about her work, visit www.cakeandconversation.com