Page 22 - C.A.L.L. #41 - Summer 2016

We are sitting in the Orchard Cabin (named for the abutting grove of apple trees), one of the property’s
eight ‘‘on the grid’’ structures, and Haeg is spooning stewed apples, made from a recent harvest, into a
bowl. Hard cider from those same apples ferments in a huge milky jug under the kitchen table. A wood
fire hisses, pour-over coffee drips. His dog, Ivy, a 17-year-old Australian shepherd, lies at his feet. The
walls of the cabin are lined with canned fruit and an eclectic range of books, from ones on Modernist
architecture to ‘‘Mushrooms Demystified’’ and ‘‘Cider,’’ co-written (who knew?) by Annie Proulx. Outside,
the only sound is the Pacific Ocean, two miles away, deep, raspy and constant. Haeg calls the landscape
‘‘enchanted,’’ and I am inclined to agree.

The view toward Orchard Cabin. Photo: Andres Gonzalez

Haeg, who has been here for 15 months, has mostly been trying to bring the place, with its range of
idiosyncratic cabins in various states of disrepair and its homespun yet surprisingly effective water and
power infrastructure — one original communard had been an engineer — up to some level of rustic
comfort. All of this preparation is ‘‘setting the stage’’ for his latest work, a revived Salmon Creek Farm. He
has no illusions of recreating the original commune. ‘‘That was life,’’ he says. ‘‘This is also an art project.’’
Haeg imagines something between an arts colony and a gathering place, somewhere to come when you
want ‘‘to take a step back from contemporary society.’’

IT MIGHT BE EASY to dismiss Haeg’s commune as an artist’s folly, some ‘‘cabin porn’’ exercise fit for
Instagram consumption, had his entire career not signposted him toward Salmon Creek. There was his
2001 Sundown Salon, a monthly gathering (organized around themes that ran from ‘‘knitting’’ to
‘‘political ennui’’) which operated for five years at his William King-designed hilltop geodesic domestead
in Los Angeles; and 2012’s ‘‘Domestic Integrities’’ at the Walker Art Center. With its participatory fruit

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