Why Artists Are Flocking to This 1,000-Acre Lompoc Ranch

In many Native American traditions, the birth of a white buffalo calf is regarded as one of the most sacred and auspicious events. I learned this before visiting the White Buffalo Land Trust, a 1,000-acre Lompoc ranch dedicated to regenerative agriculture and ecological stewardship, and it came back to me as I approached the ranch’s entrance, passing the white buffalo insignia.

Founded in 2018, the ranch’s work centers on four interconnected pillars: soil health, water resources, biodiversity, and community well-being. To support those goals, it employs regenerative vineyard practices, including replacing conventional pesticides with compost teas and kelp extracts, restoring oak woodlands and riparian habitats, managing cattle and goat grazing, and conducting ongoing ecological monitoring.

Perhaps the most compelling initiative at the ranch is its Artist-in-Residence program, which invites select artists to live and work on the property, using the landscape as both a studio and muse. Through their work, participants explore the relationship between art, agriculture, and ecology while engaging directly with the land.

“What we’re seeing is that it’s really helping to develop this emotional doorway and connection to this landscape, to our food system, and to the work that we’re doing here at the ranch,” said Ana Smith, the Land Trust’s director of programs and engagement, on a recent foggy morning when I visited to learn more about the program.

The ranch itself, tucked off Jalama Road, possesses a certain remoteness. Once you exit the main road, it’s about 1.2 miles before you reach home base, a cluster of buildings that includes a large barn and several cabins. When I pulled up, I was greeted by one of the barn cats: an orange tabby with soft, silk-like fur.

For the Artist in Residence program, each artist stays on the ranch for six weeks in one of the cabins and receives a travel and materials stipend. As part of their residency, they are required to lead one educational engagement with a nearby school and one community engagement, typically a workshop held at the ranch.

The program launched last summer, supported by seed funding from the Robert and Mercedes Eichholz Foundation. In its next phase, the foundation will match funds raised by the Land Trust, which Smith said, “establishes a strong foundation while creating opportunities for additional partners and donors to help sustain and grow the program’s long-term impact.”

Six artists working across disparate mediums have participated in the program thus far, including photographer Julia Forrest, block-printmaker Angelia LaPointe, and, more recently, San Francisco–based composer Nathan Sherwood Liang.

As Smith gave me a tour of the ranch in an off-road vehicle, she shared vignettes about past artists and pointed to spots where they had worked. During Forrest’s residency, for example, she was particularly drawn to a hollow oak tree. 

During Liang’s residency, he collected recordings from the ranch’s various ecological sites, ranging from grass frequencies to birdsong. “We have this joke now that really what he was doing is just deejaying nature,” Smith said with a chuckle.

When I visited the ranch in the beginning of June, sculptor Kim Radochia was the sole artist-in-residence and in the final week of the program. We came across her in the middle of plastering a large live oak. She had kind eyes and gardenia-white hair, and she wore a camo sweatshirt emblazoned with the phrase “Seek Discomfort.” She described sculpting as a “never-ending journey.”

Radocchia, who is from Boston, said she started creating art when she was young but became more serious about it in her twenties. Her work has been displayed at Art Miami, Sculpt Miami, and the Palm Beach Modern + Contemporary Art Fair, among others.

She said she applied to the program without knowing much about the land, and since exploring it more, she has chosen to create in places that speak to her. “I’ll just start doing things and am like, ‘Okay, that’s how it’s going to be,’” she said as she fingered a piece of chicken wire for another project she’s working on.

Over the course of six weeks, Radochia has created a series of site-responsive installations throughout the ranch. Across the way from where we stood, chatting, was a circular stick formation she had created that birds seemed to gravitate toward. She even caught the orange tabby flopping “himself right in the middle of it, and taking a huge nap.” Deeper in the valley, she has placed pieces of wood at the base of a tree stump where lizards have taken up residence.

The live oak she was plastering that day was in preparation for her final workshop in the program, a community sculpting workshop that serves as the culmination of her residency in which participants would take a guided walk on the land, learn basic casting techniques with smaller forms Radochia prepared, and then collaborate on a sculpture to remain on-site.

Behind her, tucked among the trees, was a treehouse that artists can use as a sort of home base. Inside, Radochia showed us some of her creations: watercolors, large balls of California lichen she collected from around the ranch, and, my favorite, a sculpture made from twigs that Smith pointed out resembled an anatomical heart.

As Smith drove me around the ranch, she said the team plans to announce the open call for the 2027 residency season later this summer. Given the enthusiastic response to past residency cycles, she expects selecting just a handful of artists will once again prove challenging. Still, she and the team are excited to welcome a new group of creatives willing and ready to celebrate the beauty and vitality of Jalama Canyon Ranch.

After spending the afternoon on the property, it was easy to understand the appeal. I found myself thinking back to something Radochia had said earlier: “It’s been a privilege to be on the land and to create.”