GUERNEVILLE, Calif. — "It was a dream come true for me. It was magical. Even when I come back I feel emotional about it because it was a very formidable time,” said artist Jane Rekedal.
It was within the aging walls an old barn on what is now Austin Creek State Recreation Area where Jane Rekedal and Seth Capron fell in love with each other and the feeling of clay between their fingers.
"We met here in 1973. Seth was a student and I was visiting,” Rekedal said.
During the mid-20th century, Jane and Seth were seeking enlightenment in a ceramics renaissance known as the American Studio Pottery Movement, and the place to find that enlightenment was at Pond Farm Workshops in Sonoma County.
"People were listening for other critiques but there wasn't any chit-chat going on. Everybody was really focused on doing a really good job,” Capron said.
Pond Farm is a 400-acre artist colony created during World War II by Gordon and Jan Herr. Pond Farm welcomed many artist instructors, but their most influential teacher was Marguerite Wildenhain.
"She was a disciplined master and expected that of her students,” Rekedal said.
Marguerite was a Jewish graduate of Bauhaus, an elite art school in Germany. Just as she was making a name for herself, she was forced to jump on a boat and flee the Nazis. She told her story in the documentary Marguerite: from the Bauhaus to Pond Farm.
"We sailed very slowly though the channel full of mines. We went without motors; we were just drifting," Wildenhain once recalled.
When she arrived in the U.S., the Herr family provided Marguerite with a teaching job at Pond Farm. It didn’t take long for her teaching techniques to attract pottery students.
"She didn't want just imitators. She wanted to launch people,” Rekedal said.
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Marguerite helped design the foot-powered pottery studio in the barn. Jane and Seth recall making thousands of pottery pieces only to destroy them after they were critiqued.
“They were just recycled. So, you just take the clay that hasn't been fired and you're just like… wedge it up and you're good to go,” Rekedal said.
After a series of unfortunate events, the artist colony came to an end in 1953, but Marguerite continued to teach pottery inside the old barn into the 1980s.
"She was not of the mindset that that you want to go out and promote yourself. She said don't waste your time on it. You know, just make good work," Rekedal said.
California State Parks eventually bought the property through eminent domain to expand Austin Creek State Recreation Area. Marguerite was allowed to live on the farm till her death in 1985.
Today, conservation groups like Stewards Of The Coast And Redwoods help State Parks manage the Farm and offer guided tours to help inspire the next pottery movement. Pond Farm Pottery recently became Sonoma County's sixth national historic landmark.
To schedule a tour, visit pondfarm.org
MORE FUN WITH CLAY ON THE BACKROADS: They work in clay, and what they make is meant to last for 100 years. You'll never see most of it unless you look up high or dig deep.
