The Art Dept.

moving pictures

  • Belle Creative is now The Art Dept.

    If you came here looking for Belle Creative, you’re at the correct corner of the internet—Belle Creative is now The Art Dept.!

    The Art Dept. is a boutique creative firm comprised of an extended family of artists—designers, filmmakers, writers, photographers, typographers, musicians—pooling their creative talents to tell original stories.  Since its inception in 2005 (as Belle Creative) by Sarah and Peter Berkley in Sonoma, CA, The Art Dept. has developed custom creative content for clients from the Brooklyn fashion industry to California’s artisan food and wine culture to the Northwest music scene.

    Mary Berkley Shadley, Peter’s sister and an accomplished graphic designer, is a recent addition to the firm as Design Director.  We also often tap our talented network of close friends and family—such as product designer (and brother-in-law) Karson Shadley and musician brothers Max and Ryan Lynch—to broaden our scope of work.

    Now based both in the Seattle area—Tacoma, WA—and the Bay Area—Oakland, CA—The Art Dept. continues to develop a wide range of creative products with a focus on short videos, creative writing and print design.

    Please browse the site to see work completed and please don’t hesitate to contact us if you’d like to work together!

     

  • video // Turkey Loves Gewürz

    Turkey and Gewürz—love at first sight.

    Gundlach Bundschu Winery is not a winery known for its subtlety. Boasting every sort of farce and frolick under its 152-year-old belt— from hijacking the Napa Wine Train to kidnapping Sir Richard Branson—Gun Bun, the oldest family-run winery in California, is rather adored for its puckish reputation as much as for legendary wines such as Gewürztraminer. (In Wine Country, there’s an inveterate truth that you’ll surely fail a sobriety test if you can’t properly pronounce “Gundlach Bundschu Gewürztraminer.” )

    So, in the end, it only made sense that the fine people at Gun Bun called us up the other day to impart, “We want to dress Jeff Bundschu up in a turkey costume and have you film some videos about how well holiday turkeys go with our Gewürztraminer!”

    Above is the first of three short videos we shot and edited about a turkey and his unquenchable thirst for Gundlach Bundschu Gewürztraminer.

    And below are the second and third—Turkey Bowling taken to a whole new level and a refreshing plunge into Gewurz, respectively:

  • Cult Sonoma video // Huichica Music Festival : 2011

    It was June in California—when all everyone expects is sunshine and blue skies for miles—but it rained. And rained. And every event in the area was cancelled. Except one: the second annual Huichica Music Festival.

    In fact, it’s our belief that the inclement weather made an outstanding music festival that much more “rock and roll.”

    “The music was mesmerizing, the vibe was infectious, and Mother Nature was awesome,” says Gun Bun president and festival co-producer Jeff Bundschu. Cramming into tents and clinking wine glasses together during periodic downpours only seemed to further the bonding experience.

    Take a look at these short videos we produced for Cult Sonoma capturing the experience—included in part one (above) are performances by David Williams, CB Brand, Tu Fawning and Breathe Owl Breathe.

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  • video // eat good food!

    We could spend days lost in the aisles of San Francisco’s Bi-Rite Market—exploring every nook and cranny from the gorgeous produce to the unique artisanal products.  And we were able to do just that while creating this video.  We love Bi-Rite’s emphasis on good food and food community—and we’re happy to help spread the word about their new book (below) with this video (above)!

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  • SanFrancisco magazine // Scribe is The Best!

     

    Sarah was delighted to oblige Editor Bruce Kelley when he asked her for a brief write-up on the bohemian wonderland of our friends’ Scribe Winery for the latest edition of San Francisco Magazine’s Best of the Bay Area:

    “Rarely have backwoods and bohemian gone together so well—or with such underground notice—as they have at Andrew Mariani’s two-year-old Scribe Winery. There’s scarcely more than a crude wooden sign to it off Napa Road in Sonoma, but rampant word of mouth among the city’s celebrity artists and artisans has generated a following that thrives not only on the wine but also on the loose party scene. The 256-acre property has a checkered history spanning everything from turn-of-the-century winery to bootleggers’ brothel to industrial turkey farm…”

    To read the rest, be sure to pick up a copy at your local news stand or click here!

     

  • The Great Pinzgauer Adventure

    Why tour when you can DETOUR?

    Gundlach Bundschu vineyard excursions get you off the beaten wine path to taste wines where they are grown.  And we were excited to join them on the tour with our cameras in hand to capture the experience—car bingo, hawaiian bobbleheads, African watusis, wine and all.

    Enjoy the video above (produced by Sarah + Peter) and be sure to take the tour next time you have the chance—see the flyer below (designed by Mary)!

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  • Tuesday Night Farmers Market

    Since our very first summer living in Sonoma nearly a decade ago, we’ve developed a tradition of attending the Tuesday night Sonoma Valley Farmers Market for farm-fresh picnic dinners with friends and family.  We were delighted to document the opening night of the 2011 Tuesday night season for Sonomanews.com.

  • Cult Sonoma video // Film Festival

    We are so lucky in Sonoma to have a world class film festival every spring—the Sonoma International Film Festival.  We were even luckier this year because we were able to have access to the whole festival and document it day by day for Cult Sonoma—including filmmaker interviews, special event footage and even some playful words from Lifetime Achievement honoree Susan Sarandon.

    Click through to see the other two short videos…

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  • Cult Sonoma video // Trashion Show

    We lent our video production services out to Cult Sonoma to cover the exciting, first annual Trashion Fashion Show & Exhibit featuring homegrown fashions created from reused, repurposed and recycled materials.

    See more at Cult Sonoma.