Located just 10 minutes away from downtown Duvall, down a bumpy road, Clear Creek Farm has been a place where art and nature can collide since the fall of 2024.
Executive director and microbe farmer Liz Ligon started looking for properties around the time of the COVID-19 pandemic with the goal to create a space that would foster community.
“We wanted to build an organization that would bring people together and inspire connection with nature and personal creativity,” she said.
For Ligon, crafts are more than acrylic paints and a trip to a craft store, but are meant to be useful arts like basketmaking, foraging, weaving and using natural dyes.
While Ligon focuses more on the outdoor aspect of the farm, arts program director Amber Smith focuses on indoor arts like fiber arts and watercolors. With experience as a Waldorf teacher, Smith values the importance of combining art and education — especially during workshops, where parents and children can create alongside each other and learn a new craft.
“The parents sometimes are more excited than the kids,” Smith said. “Inviting parents in to learn with their children, for me as a Waldorf educator, really means a lot. That’s something that I would like to see more of.”
The long-term goal for Clear Creek Farm is to have more workshops for families, using natural materials that have been harvested across the 30-acre property. Ideally, Ligon would like to use fleece from the farm’s own alpacas, as well as natural dyes from plants and lichens.
“I think that what we are doing is pretty fundamentally different from other art studios in the area in that we are really focusing on getting back to traditional and natural art processes using natural and traditional materials,” Ligon said.
Currently, the farm needs volunteer docents for the onsite art studio, The Hive, as well as more fiber artists and weavers to help in future workshops. The forms to fill out for volunteering and teaching are available on the Clear Creek Farm website.
Prices range depending on the type of class, but the farm directors want their classes and workshops to be accessible to people at all income levels. Sliding scale prices will be offered based on class fees, as well as an option to pay a little more to help support folks with fewer financial resources.
More details on the workshops can be found at https://clearcreekfarmduvall.org. The farm is located at 29727 Big Rock Road in Duvall.