Documentary on Pond Farm artist Marguerite Wildenhain to air on PBS

After making its world premiere earlier this month at the Rialto Cinemas in Sebastopol, locally produced documentary film “Marguerite: from The Bauhaus to Pond Farm” will debut on TV at 9 p.m. Monday, March 13, on Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) member station KRCB. It airs again March 19 at 7 p.m. on KPJK and at 7:30 p.m. on KRCB.

The 30-minute film, sponsored and produced by Sonoma County nonprofit group Stewards of the Coast and Redwoods in partnership with California State Parks, examines the life and legacy of longtime Sonoma County artist Marguerite Wildenhain and her work at the famed Pond Farm pottery studio near Armstrong Woods.

Born in France in 1896, and trained at the influential art school Bauhaus in Germany, the ceramic artist traveled to the U.S. in 1940 during the rise of the Nazi party in Germany. She joined an artist collective in Guerneville after taking a teaching position at California College of Arts and Crafts (now the California College of the Arts) in Oakland.

Wildenhain helped establish Pond Farm, the studio where she trained generations of young artists each summer in Sonoma County for three decades before her death in 1985.

Today, Stewards of the Coast and Redwoods partners with California State Parks to promote, restore, and protect Pond Farm among other natural and cultural resources in Sonoma County parks.

With the new documentary, directed by Oakland filmmaker David Washburn (“An American Mosque”) and narrated by the artists who trained under Wildenhain, the environmental stewardship organization hopes to introduce a national audience to the pottery master’s story, which until now, has largely gone untold, according to Justin Lindenberg, Stewards’ executive director .

KRCB broadcasts on channel 22 on Comcast and digital services in the North Bay. KPJK broadcasts on Comcast channel 17, DirecTV and AT&T on channel 43, and Dish on channel 60.

For more information on the film, go to stewardscr.org.

For more information on the upcoming TV broadcasts, go to norcalpublicmedia.org.