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Salmon
Creek
Arts

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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 seasonal two month sessions of Schools of Salmon Creek and a series of two week workshops focused on the living arts related to land, shelter, craft, food, body, and stewardship.

We cultivate expanding communities of artists, each coming 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, and now as an independent self-sustaining 501(c)3 non-profit organization, SCA will eventually take over operations and ownership of Salmon Creek Farm. 

Schools of
Salmon
Creek

Summer session June 2nd to July 18th
Fall session: September 1st to October 17th
(applications closed)

Schools of Salmon Creek is a seasonal land-based program for artists *of all kinds* at Salmon Creek Farm. For our inaugural seven-week seasons we carry on the legacy of the original counter-culture commune to this next chapter on the land by considering abundance, care-taking, climate, community, ecology, embodiment, habitat, inter-dependence, mystery, resilience, resourcefulness, self-sufficiency, sensuality, shelter, sustenance, and stewardship; getting off screens and out of doors; where the teachers are the land and each other.

For artists seeking a deeper connection to the natural world as a context for their work while engaging with other artists - we offer time, space, community, and the opportunity to participate in the daily life of the Salmon Creek Farm sanctuary on the Mendocino Coast. 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 school where artists produce work alone in a studio. There are no typical indoor 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. How can we awaken all of our senses and be attentive artists in the world today?

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, in communion with other creatures and the past and future humans: warmed by wood from the land that those before you may have chopped, sowing a garden and tending an orchard that may feed those coming after you, using water from the spring, contributing to the richness of the soil with your compost, while honoring and learning from indigenous Pomo knowledge.  

It is a unique chance to expand your art practice while cultivating fundamental life and survival skills - that can provide a sense of agency and security to the precarious life of an artist - and who knows, they might even find their way into your art practice some day. Come with an open mind, the willingness to improvise, a spirit of generosity, the capacity to respond to the environment in adaptive ways, and a sense of adventure.

Offerings & Intentions



Students come - not as empty vessels to be filled - but as active agents in a school we make together, with hands in daily life on the land and co-creating the curriculum. Plan on around four hours of scheduled time together on weekdays including regular presentations of student work and a shared evening meal. The rest of the time is free, for art-making, musing, engaging with the land and each other. The daily program is shaped by the group with guidance and support from a resident SCF artist guide/facilitator (Fritz Haeg in Summer 2025).


Each student comes with both an intention for their time on the land and an offering, a skill or capacity to offer the community in at least one of these seven expansive categories that may - or may not - be a part of what they consider their art practice:

  • SHELTER: building, repairing, sheltering...
  • FOOD: cooking, baking, fermenting...
  • LAND: gardening, cultivating, farming...
  • CRAFT: weaving, knitting, potting...
  • PRINT: publishing, storytelling, printing...
  • SHOW: performing, dancing, staging...
  • CARE: stewarding, caretaking, tending...

Students offer six hours per week of service to the community in some form, leading skill-shares, workshops, morning movement lessons on the dance deck, food cultivating clinics, native clay harvesting sessions, forestry stewardship walks, wood-working intros, seaweed foraging excursions, cooking classes that provide daily communal meals, collective publishing projects, all through the lense of the artist. Plus Saturday morning work parties focused on seasonal operations like tending the food gardens that feed us.

Every session has at least one student representing each category, including a special SLUGS culinary fellow staying in Dawn cabin, offered a full scholarship in exchange for leading the community in preparing six communal meals per week. 

Everyone is connected a few weeks before arrival, to make introductions, share reading lists, and details of their proposed offerings and intentions. We also offer connections to local collaborators, resources, and facilities nearby including Cider Creek Collective, The Mendocino Art Center, and Xa Kako Dile. We are occasionally joined by special guest artists from the extended Salmon Creek Farm community. Each season culminates with a show and gathering at our little space in San Francisco and perhaps another partnering local or urban venue, accompanied by a zine/catalog.

Program & Calendar



2025 Calendar
Summer session 
  • Mar 16: applications due
  • Jun 2nd: arrivals
  • Jun 3rd: orientations and presentations
  • Jul 18th: departures 
Fall session 
  • Apr 13th: applications due
  • Sep 1st: arrivals
  • Sep 2nd: orientations and presenations
  • Oct 17th: departures 
Daily Life
Subject to changes and adjustments over time...

  • 8:30-9:30 Mon-Sat: morning movement on the Dance Deck.

  • 10am-11:30pm Mon-Fri: group offerings, activities, workshops, skill-shares, seminars.

  • 5:30-6:30 Mon-Fri: rotating presentations of student work. (in situ on the land, performances, readings, etc.)

  • 6:30 Sun-Fri: communal evening meals.

  • Saturday work party 10-11:30am: seasonal activities on the land, tending food gardens, firewood prep, etc.

  • Sunday dinner and book circle 6:30-8:30pm: taking turns leading discussions on a book proposed to the group.
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