Salmon
Creek
Arts
Salmon Creek Arts is a non-profit organization offering seasonal programs at Salmon Creek Farm, a sanctuary of precious riparian and coast redwood habitat on Central Pomo land, established as a counterculture commune in 1971. We inaugurated programs in 2024 and launch year-round activity on the land in 2025 with a one month wood fire ceramics workshop in April and seasonal sessions of The School of Salmon Creek starting in May.
We cultivate expanding communities of artists who build, cook, craft, garden, move, publish, and steward. Each artist comes with something to offer the commune, learning from each other and the land. There is time to slow down, space to take a step back, the chance to live close to the land, to participate in its cycles, dwelling in modest hand-crafted spaces within a communal free-range wild wooded environment.
Salmon Creek Farm is located on 33 acres of second and third growth redwoods two miles from California’s Mendocino Coast. Old logging roads and foot trails criss-cross south facing slopes from sunny meadows, gardens, orchards, communal outdoor kitchen, and dance deck on top, to eight original commune cabins each nestled in their own nook of the terrain, across a ravine that bisects the land to abandoned off-grid cabins, and finally down to Big Salmon Creek in the valley. It is an especially good spot to feel your small place in the big cycles of life on earth.
Salmon Creek Farm has been informally offering arts programs in a similar spirit since 2014, including writing retreats, wood-fire ceramics workshops, carpentry and food gardening skill-shares, and free BIPOC artists retreats. As an independent self-sustaining non-profit 501(c)3 organization, SCA will eventually take over operations and ownership of Salmon Creek Farm.
The School of
Salmon Creek
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In Spring 2025 we launch our first season of The School of Salmon Creek. For those who have already established their path - but are seeking a deeper connection to the natural world while engaging with other artists - we offer time, space, community, and especially the opportunity to participate in the daily life of the Salmon Creek Farm sanctuary. It is a good place to step away from daily routines and surrender to the cycles of life close to the land as part of an improvised artist community.
This is not a conventional art school where artists produce work alone in a studio. There are no conventional facilities or production spaces, just a desk in your private cabin, the triangle Dance Deck, the Outdoor Kitchen, the orchards & gardens, the riparian valley of Salmon Creek, and 33 acres of coast redwoods. In some ways, you’re just another creature on the land, part of the organic flow as soon as you arrive and as long as you stay. Making fires to stay warm with wood from the land. Contributing to the richness of the orchard soil with your humanure waste and kitchen compost. Using water from the spring and eating from the garden and orchard you help tend.
In Spring 2025 we launch our first season of The School of Salmon Creek. For those who have already established their path - but are seeking a deeper connection to the natural world while engaging with other artists - we offer time, space, community, and especially the opportunity to participate in the daily life of the Salmon Creek Farm sanctuary. It is a good place to step away from daily routines and surrender to the cycles of life close to the land as part of an improvised artist community.
This is not a conventional art school where artists produce work alone in a studio. There are no conventional facilities or production spaces, just a desk in your private cabin, the triangle Dance Deck, the Outdoor Kitchen, the orchards & gardens, the riparian valley of Salmon Creek, and 33 acres of coast redwoods. In some ways, you’re just another creature on the land, part of the organic flow as soon as you arrive and as long as you stay. Making fires to stay warm with wood from the land. Contributing to the richness of the orchard soil with your humanure waste and kitchen compost. Using water from the spring and eating from the garden and orchard you help tend.
For many this is also a welcome and unique chance to cultivate fundamental life and survival skills that can provide a sense of agency, self-reliance, and security to the precarious life of an artist. How can stewardship find a way into your practice as an artist? You will probably not be able to work in your normal ways. Those coming with an open mind, a sense of adventure, a spirit of improvisation, and the capacity to respond to the environment in adaptive ways will really thrive.
For 2025 we are welcoming artists with a focus, experience, and skill in at least one of these categories:
- Stewarding (hosting, caretaking, tending...)
- Gardening (cultivating, foraging, farming...)
- Cooking (preserving, baking, feeding...)
- Crafting (weaving, knitting, potting...)
- Publishing (printing, designing, broadcasting...)
- Building (repairing, constructing, sheltering...)
- Moving (dancing, performing...)
- Applications open late January 2025
- Seven week seasonal sessions.
- Fees TBA.
- Daily communal meal from the garden.
- Open to US residents 22 and older.
- Collaborative duos welcome.
- Application fee of $20.
Selection Criteria
- Comfort level with self-sufficiency in our woodsy environs.
- Potential for future growth and benefit from time at SCF.
- Forming a group working across a diverse mix of media.
- Aptitude for both intense solitude and sociability.
- Possibility for future engagement with Salmon Creek Arts.
WORKSHOP:
Wood Fire Ceramics
Monday, March 31st to Friday, April 25th 2025
In partnership with our Albion neighbors Cider Creek Collective. An immersive, collaborative month long workshop making objects using primary local materials: native clay, salvaged wood as fuel for the kiln, our own hands, and the natural time of elemental processes. Accommodations at SCF and weekday workshops at Cider Creek Collective. Open to *all* levels.
In partnership with our Albion neighbors Cider Creek Collective. An immersive, collaborative month long workshop making objects using primary local materials: native clay, salvaged wood as fuel for the kiln, our own hands, and the natural time of elemental processes. Accommodations at SCF and weekday workshops at Cider Creek Collective. Open to *all* levels.
Price is total for single, couple, or group - not including $1600/ea Cider Creek workshop fee:
︎ Solo at Salmon or sharing Cedar/Dawn ($2100)
︎ Solo or couple in 1 bed at Moonlight, Walden or River ($2250)
︎ Solo, couple, or two friends in 2 beds at Rainbow ($3700)
︎ Solo, couple, or two friends in 2 beds at Cedar ($4200)
︎ Solo, couple, or two friends at shared cabin, in 1 of 2 separate bedrooms at Dawn ($2100/$2500)
︎ Group cabin for up to 4 people in three beds / two bedrooms at Dawn ($5000)
︎ Solo at Salmon or sharing Cedar/Dawn ($2100)
︎ Solo or couple in 1 bed at Moonlight, Walden or River ($2250)
︎ Solo, couple, or two friends in 2 beds at Rainbow ($3700)
︎ Solo, couple, or two friends in 2 beds at Cedar ($4200)
︎ Solo, couple, or two friends at shared cabin, in 1 of 2 separate bedrooms at Dawn ($2100/$2500)
︎ Group cabin for up to 4 people in three beds / two bedrooms at Dawn ($5000)
- Reach out if you applied for the February session and couldn’t join us, but still interested for April, no need to apply again.
- Couples/groups encouraged to apply, each applies separately and accepted as a couple/group.
- Read about Life with the Land at SCF before applying.
- We are offering these programs as affordably as possible and fundraising for a future scholarship program. In the mean time we are inviting those who can afford more to contribute towards discounts for applicants of historically marginalized communities (especially BIPOC).