Applications are open for our next workshop!
April 6-May 1
Applications for this program are open now! We’ll be reviewing applications as they come in and start following up in mid to late October. Space is limited.
***The Cider Creek tuition for the clay workshop is $2000. Fees for housing are handled thru Salmon Creek Farm. Head over to https://salmoncreekfarm-arts.org/Wood-Fire-Ceramics for more info, or go straight to the application at https://form.jotform.com/SalmonCreekFarm/wood-fire-ceramics-2026 .
Thank you for your interest and we look forward to seeing your application!
In this immersive workshop taught by Ryan Schnirel, with guest artists Grace Potter and Cider Creek founders Nick Schwartz and Jess Thompson, you’ll live on the land, make things, and fire a catenary-arch wood-soda kiln. You’ll harvest and process native clays and play with glaze recipes using local materials. With plenty of time to come and go from the studio, you can pace yourself and explore how it feels to settle into local life here on the coast.
You’ll source ideas in elemental ways: daily use, ecological decision-making, site-specific responses to place. You’ll share respite from digital, urban, and consumer culture, and tune into intrinsic possibilities in raw materials, process, and the land.
Participants will stay up the hill at the historic Back to the Land commune known as Salmon Creek Farm, lovingly restored and stewarded since 2014 by artist and architect Fritz Haeg. We’re excited to join Fritz and the SCF community in a larger conversation about land-based, shared creative activity. SCF “continues the legacy of the original ‘70’s commune, entering a new chapter as a long-term art project shaped by many hands, a sort of queered commune-farm-homestead-sanctuary-school hybrid”. Cider Creek and Salmon Creek share a vision of giving folks the opportunity to sink into tangible experience, with hand-crafted, comfortable living; a sense of community; and a connection with the natural environment.
Our goal is to cultivate a community environment that is as welcoming, responsive, and compassionate as the material itself. Our workshops are open to all, total beginner and advanced, non-artist and artist, all occupations, ages, and kinds of life experience. We welcome humans of all orientations, origins, and interests, striving to make Cider Creek Collective a safe, supportive space to enjoy making art.
The Workshop:
During the first week, you’ll be harvesting local clay and glaze materials from Cider Creek, Salmon Creek, and local river estuaries. Ryan will demonstrate making techniques in the studio, working back and forth between the potter’s wheel and handbuilding, utilitarian and sculptural and open to requests. Grace, Jess, and Nick will do some demos as well.
Outside of the studio, you’ll have plenty of time to live on the land in Albion and experience the local environment and communities, coming and going from the studio. You can experiment with the material, learning the process of harvesting and refining primary clay, moving at the pace of natural processes. We’ll learn how to make for the kiln, and for the special atmosphere created by wood and soda firing. Even the weather will come into play, as the moisture in your work responds to the climate and influences your path forward.
In the 3rd week of the workshop, you’ll load your work into the kiln and heat it up slowly, allowing the fire to decorate your pieces with patterns of melting wood ash and flame. The kiln will provide a warm 2400 degree nucleus as the days get longer and warmer and fruit trees start flowering around you.
You’ll tend the firing in shifts around the clock, entering the circular clock of “kiln time”. You can choose what times of day work for you to sit with the kiln, and generally abandon traditional time and ambitions in favor of sitting by the fire, tuning into the process.
The kiln will take 3 days to cool, during which time you can enjoy Salmon Creek Farm and the local area on your own or join in visits to local studios and kiln sites.
Our programs are offered as affordably as possible while we work on establishing scholarship funds. In the meantime, Salmon Creek Farm invites those who can afford more to contribute towards discounts for applicants of historically marginalized communities. There is space on the application for you to specify your need or your ability to support others.
Work trade scholarships are available at Cider Creek, for info email jrthompson@cidercreekcollective.com.