Devin Envelope Art

Back in the 1980's, before there was email or any other electronic forms of communication, when we all began going in different directions (and then sometimes the same directions), we kept in touch with the U.S. Postal Service. We wrote letters to each other and those letters included words and drawings and things that we would cut out and things that we would collect, so every few weeks we would all get a little bit of each other in an envelope in our mailbox and that was always such an indescribable moment. You could see and feel that person in that paper, in those marks, in the gum that had to be licked to seal the envelope. It was like that person was whispering to you from far away, and you could almost feel their breath on your hair it was so close and so intimate. Try doing that with email.
This is the envelope of a letter I received from Devin after he moved to Minneapolis and when I was still in Bozeman. His triangle glasses artist character is laughing and I was probably giggling when I opened it up because inside would be some magical bit of Devin that had floated all the way from the metropolis to my basement apartment in the Bozone and it was all for me to read and look at and read and look at and puzzle over again and again. And then it ended it up in a box in my basement thirty years for me to rediscover, damp and discolored, a couple months ago. And then the magic, that bit of Devin, that voice and that breath, could once again giggle like a boat on the water, and I'd feel it and almost see and hear it.

If you don't give me all your money, I'm going to set off this nuclear device

There was a lot of anxiety about nuclear war and nuclear winter and the possibility that someone, maybe Ronald Reagan, was going to hold us all hostage with the US nuclear arsenal back in the 1980's, when Devin drew this cartoon. Devin's terrorist here might have a legitimate nuclear device, or it might be a part that he stole from a car wash. It doesn't seem to be much of a threat, but the background images, nameless shapes of nations, garbage cans, a strange large ventilation device, all see fairly threatening. But the person in the comic with hands in his pockets, still doesn't seem all that frightened. He's already see it all. Or maybe he's reaching his hands in his pockets to pull out that money.

Adam and Eve

Here's another one that Devin made for the MSU student newspaper The Exponent, but was probably never used. That serpent was dishing up something that was maybe a little more radical than the typical college newspaper because in those days we were doing some parody issues and including things like Devin's comix. Adam and Eve don't know what is about to hit them.

Even John Doesn't Know What It Is

Here I am looking quite confused at something that Devin has put in my way. Confusion is central in Devin's work, and this glob of lines and shading and squiggles that might be Death moving a chair or might be a maze that confused itself into surrender is certainly a significant object of confusion.

Dead Pigs Always Have an Inferiority Complex

This is from a letter that I got from Devin and time has thinned the paper so the specter of the 'Vert from the other side has shown through this strange comic of a dead pig able to say that it has an inferiority complex and an octopus with a new beehive-like hairdo. The face of the 'Vert seems to be rising out of the hairdo nearly reaching to the dead pig as if it were all planned that way.

Big Lips

Here's a back to school special. Just a little celebration of Big Lips! This was a piece of clip-art that Devin made for the Exponent "All Lips Issue," a parody issue that we made when the editor and new editor were away at a conference back in 1985, I think. The all lips issue was, of course, inspired and master-minded by Devin.

Phillis and Howard drink beer in outer space

There is something cross like about the stars in this outer space epic where Phillis and Howard drink beer non-chalantly in zero gravity. Mundane activities in non-traditional settings, that is one of the hallmarks of Devin's work. And maybe growing up in the space age made it all seem to possible.