From Barstow's "Cave" to a Creative Lab in the Desert: Heidi Schwegler `85 supports artists

Schwegler, a professional artist, founded the Lab in 2019, and oversees its art gallery, workshop, residency program, library and music recording studio. 

“This is what came from Barstow. I’ve started a new art school,” Schwegler said. “And it started in the basement of Barstow by the boys locker room."

The Cave, as today’s students call it, still resides between the now-renovated girls and boys locker rooms.

“That’s where my identity began to develop,” Schwegler said. “That scrappy little art department defined the rest of my life.” 

In addition to art, Schwegler also participated in tennis, track and Barstow musicals. Some of her best memories came from moments in the Senior Room, and she can’t forget the lemon bars that were served at lunch. She also fondly remembers how green Barstow’s campus was. 

“As a young person, it was so inspiring because it felt like it was an oasis of a thousand acres,” she said.

After Barstow, Schwegler attended the University of Kansas, where she received a BFA in Art History. She then started a certificate program in teaching and education. The program required an elective, and Schwegler signed up for metalsmith and jewelry class. She quickly found her passion, and switched out of the certificate program and into a BFA in metalsmithing.

As a professional artist, Schwegler loves working with all sorts of material. She is a “self-described material junkie,” and commonly makes sculptures out of glass, metal, wood, wax, rubber and trash.

“I make beautiful objects about messy and depressing subject matter and choose whatever material best serves the ideas,” she said. 

After KU, Schwegler went on to receive a master’s in Metalsmithing from the University of Oregon. She then spent 20 years teaching at Oregon College of Art and Craft, where she became a full professor and Chair of the MFA in Applied Craft + Design. The program focused heavily on supporting oneself through entrepreneurial strategies, and Schwegler decided to move in that same direction: “I got so jealous of what [my students] were doing that I did it for myself.”

In 2018, she bought two acres of what was “basically a junk yard” near California’s Joshua Tree National Park. Within three months, she cleared away the trash, built a Quonset-style building, and Yucca Valley Material Lab was born. 

Today, Yucca Valley Material Lab supports artists who can no longer afford art education, artists who are disabled, and artists who are seeking access to materials, equipment, and technical knowledge. They offer fully funded residency programs for artists, writers and musicians that include lodging, 24-hour lab access, technical assistance, and access to the community through studio visits, performances, lectures and more. 

There is also a fee-based workshop program, where people can enroll in artist-led classes focusing on materials such as glass, metal, fiber, wood, neon and experimental sound. Workshop classes for this fall include “Introduction to Welding,” “Flat to Form: Sewing for the Body” and “Introduction to Glass Fusing.”

Schwegler is currently working on a 1.5 million dollar capital campaign to construct a 1,700-square-foot adobe studio on a 2.5-acre property gifted to the nonprofit in 2024. This will be the first commercial adobe building built in the United States in 20 years, and it will be hand-built with the help of a professional brick maker. As she says: “It will be a handmade building for hands-on making.”

Schwegler would love to have Barstow alumni sign up for workshops, attend a free public event or simply come visit Yucca Valley Material Lab for a tour. 

“Barstow alumni get VIP tours with me,” she said, and noted that alumni would get “first dibs” on Airstream Trailers for lodging. She credits her passion, confidence and career path to Barstow’s art department. 

“I just can’t stress enough that that is how I developed who I am, and because of that confidence, I have created a space for artists to develop the same kind of confidence that Barstow gave me.”