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Encyclopedia Pictura is the creative association of Isaiah Saxon, Sean Hellfritsch and Daren Rabinovitch that has been producing striking, playful work since its inception. One of their early shorts, “Grow,” shows off the power of a simple, clever idea executed well:

The team has produced several music videos including work for Björk and Grizzly Bear. Here are a few stills from Grizzly Bear’s “Knife” video, which features their multimedia, practical/digital effects combination approach to direction:

There is a load of interesting behind the scenes footage and photos also on their website, such as this video:

Their claim of working in “film, art, game design, community building, and agriculture” is not a bit of bombast. From their about page:

From 2008-2011, EP led an effort to build a unique hillside neighborhood and farm called Trout Gulch. They lived and worked there along with 15 others. In 2012, they co-founded DIY in San Francisco, with Vimeo co-founder Zach Klein and OmniCorp Detroit co-founder Andrew Sliwinski. Saxon also volunteers as Media Advisor to Open Source Ecology.

They are passionate about gardening, farming, construction, villages, augmented reality, science visualization, social ecology, technological empowerment, adventure, and country living.

DIY is both a feature film in development as well as more recently a new and growing online community that encourages young people to become “Makers” and share their work, gaining confidence in their creativity and earning digital badges for their profile as they go. DIY meets kids where they already are, on connected devices, and encourages their natural creativity while learning real-world, off and online skills. The DIY “anthem”:

The Do It Yourself/Maker attitude is perhaps the most valuable thing that is being nourished as young people challenge themselves to new experiences inspired by the site.

When a person grows up understanding that they can create and mold the media and environment around them, they don’t have to resign to an existence of passively consuming at the corporate trough. An individual’s confidence in their own creativity is an essential survival skill for the future.

If there's one wonderful aspect having a part-time job, it would be the ability to diversify yourself. While it's nice to be able to see people other than your family on a 24 - 7 basis, this is not the biggest benefit I've discovered by working at the Royal Alberta Museum. While my job is primarily graphic design in nature I have been able to complete the odd illustration here and there. To top off this bunch of pure goodness, it's usually different stylistically than I do during my business hours as an illustrator. This really gives me the chance to experiment, which is very needed in this business of illustration.

The bears above were for a board game that the education department uses to educate children about grizzlies and black bears. It's more of a simple, sihouette approach and yet I found it fun (sort of like a puzzle).

Sorry to take so long in updating this blog, but Internet access has been spotty at best. I’m sitting in an Internet café called Ugly Mugs in Avon, NC on Hatteras Island, and even here over the past half hour the connection has been intermittent.

So, here’s the lowdown:

The first stop on the trip from home (just outside of Boston, MA) was Rhode Island College where I was finishing a 5-day stint as a faculty member of the first annual A.S.T.A.L Writers Institute . It was the final day. Here’s a photo of the whole group in front of the van.

Then southward.

DISASTER #1:  NO RADIO
As I wrote in my last posting, DISASTER #1 occurred around New Haven: the antenna fell off the car. Yikes! Oh well, onward… 

After a quick visit with a friend in Philadelphia, it was down to National Public Radio’s headquarters in DC for a quick-and-dirty lesson in recording sound. They told me that the broadcast of my 2^nd piece for NPR, where we’re packing for the trip, was delayed because apparently they want to hold off until they get the 3^rd piece in hand. It’s even possible that they’ll start our trip without the packing piece – so it’d begin with whatever story I record next. (Boy, I sure hope I come up with something good!) Here I am with NPR announcer Robert Siegel, and also with “All Things Considered” Senior Producer Art Silverman.

From there it was a loooong drive down to North Carolina. Rush hour traffic from hell in the Virginia Beach area. Arrived in Avon, NC around 9PM.

Here’s the thing about our Outer Banks visit. We built this into our route schedule as a nice, easy beginning for our trip -- my family comes out here every year together with our Polish friends from Connecticut and Philadelphia. It’s always fun, because our friends are fun – and some of them have kids the same age as ours so everyone is happy. Sure, it’s hot outside -- and I’m definitely not a beach person. Still, I think of this as my central-air-conditioning holiday. We do beach fires at night, or hang out in the hot tub. All good.

Yesterday (Thursday) we visited the terrific Manteo Booksellers. Here I am with the store’s owner, Steve Brumfield.



It was also Lucy’s 8^th birthday, which was all very nice...UNTIL...at the end of the day came DISASTER #2:

Lucy has developed ‘pink-eye’—conjunctivitis, which she caught from Natalia, one of our friend’s kids. Yikes! This has been a bit of a crisis because 1) it’s not comfortable for her, 2) it’s very contagious, and 3) we’ve been scrambling to find a doctor and get her a prescription for Erythromycin. Lucy should be using it every four hours, but so far we’ve been unable to make contact with any here in the middle of nowhere. We don’t know any local doctors, and today is Friday so we’re finding that many physician offices are closed today, and others will be heading out for the weekend shortly. Plus, we’ll be leaving on Sunday for Atlanta so we’re in a tizzy trying to figure this out today! Tension is high. Not sure what we’ll do, but like everything else, we’ll figure it out somehow…

DISASTER #2:  LUCY HAS PINK-EYE
 

On the brighter side: Looks like we have our antenna situation figured out. A special part needed to be ordered and it was kind of a biggish deal, but we’ve arranged to get the whole thing replaced at a Honda Dealer in College Station, TX on July 6. Until then, we’ll just have to hum a lot… :-)

Sunday we’re off to Atlanta. Stay tuned!

-- Mark

www.markpeterhughes.com

P.S. Update 6/30 1:15pm:  We finally managed to get the eye goo for Lucy.  It required a little devilish cleverness (which I will not detail here for fear of a criminal investigation...just kidding) but now all is well.  Onward!  :-)