Greetings from #rdcHQ! Our 2015 Season is already off to a busy start with several video projects taking shape for the summer program. The first stop on our moviemaking tour was a road trip to the 14th Annual Ashland Independent Film Festival! This was primarily a learning expedition for The Cobwebs Crew and we definitely learned a lot. The Crew met a lot of young filmmakers and had the opportunity to talk about their project with people at the festival. It was a very energetic and supportive environment for filmmakers and filmfans of all ages.

We also learned how to entertain ourselves while standing in line which apparently you do a lot at Film Festivals …

Right before we left for Ashland, we were able to pitch in to help the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive document a documentary they are making about the 1000 Redwood Trees that were recently gifted to Curry County. We’ll be releasing this video short in time for Earth Day 2015 on April 22!

Capturing video at the Rare Tree Reserve in Port Orford, OR

And this isn’t the only video project in the works … we’ll have a surprise announcement regarding another project we’ll be providing support on and, of course, more progress on Cobwebs — Part Three.

Whew! We have been more than a little busy behind-the-scenes at #rdcHQ. We’ll have a series of announcements regarding upcoming collaborations as well as projects in process. The big news is we are getting ready for our 351-Centennial Season! This year, The 351 Building that is home to Rural Design Collective Headquarters and Point.B Studio is 100 years old and we are going to celebrate!

We kick off with a new fine art poster for our 2015 event:

Designed by Rebecca Hargrave Malamud. 351-Building Illustration by Levi Thompson based on an original illustration of #rdcHQ by Nathan Malamud.

This is just the beginning of our 351 Design Campaign – we’re creating a #351100 Exhibition Catalog featuring our favorite artists over the years to be included in our Gegenschein Time Capsule. And, of course, there is the Time Capsule itself which will include our Mapping History project as well as other design artifacts.

We’re more than a little stoked about our season this year so we’re getting started early with some Extra Credit work including a road trip to the Ashland Independent Film Festival next weekend … Stay tuned!

Greetings from #rdcHQ! Spring is here and we’re getting ready for our Summer tracks at Rural Design Collective Headquarters. Research on our 351-Installation and corresponding web module is underway. We have been charting a historic collection of photos of Port Orford using a map highlighting a section of the town. Kudos to artist Levi Thompson for the considerable preliminary research he has done for this project. A navigable online equivalent of this map will be made available at the Port Orford Historical Photos site later this year.

This promises to be an interesting and challenging project and we’ll be adding many of these images to our Gegenschein Time Capsule as well which will be on display in our street level gallery this Summer. Stay tuned for details on this project and more as the 2015 Season at #rdcHQ begins!

Greetings from #rdcHQ! We’re spinning back up on a couple of tracks, most notably “Cobwebs” – and we’re introducing an Extra Credit character developed at our first meetup – “Sombrero” for Wiggle Planet. Sombrero was created using the Breeder App for “Peck Peck’s Journey” — an augmented reality book by those creative folks over at “Wiggle Planet.” An eclectic clutter of critters were hatched by an intrepid band of beta-testers using this tool for the book (which is currently under development). We can’t wait to experience the finished product! We’ll post relevant news here, and you can follow updates on the book at Wiggle Planet’s Facebook page as well as other Wiglet wanderings at their blog, Self Animated Systems.

Creating this character was a cool diversion and resulted in some fun brainstorming sessions – this sketch by artist Evelyn Jennings is quite creative.

What’s happening next at #rdcHQ? … Who Knows? … Stay Tuned!