Jazz 5 - Alto Sax

Here is one last jazz drawing from Devin Sexson.

Jazz 4 - Flute and keyboard

I just remember sitting at a small bar table having a couple beers with Devin Sexson while he drew and I wrote some notes. The jazz review I wrote was paired with the drawings he made in the student newspaper of Montana State University in Bozeman, the Exponent.

Jazz 3 - Flute

Here's another of Devin's jazz drawings for the jazz reviews I wrote for the Exponent newspaper.

Jazz 2 - Tenor Sax

Here's another of Devin Sexson's jazz drawings, created for a series of jazz show reviews that he and I wrote and drew for the Exponent student newspaper at Montana State in Bozeman in the mid 1980's.

Jazz 1 - Drums and Bass

This is one in a series of images Devin Sexson made of jazz performances in Bozeman, MT in the mid 1980's. I was writing for the student newspaper, The Exponent, and asked Devin to come along with me to some jazz shows. I wrote reviews about the shows and he drew what the shows looked like. I paired his images with my reviews in the newspaper. These images convey exactly what those shows felt like.

Palm shave

'Nuff Said.

Exponent Ad

Devin Sexon made a couple ads for the Exponent Newspaper at Montana State University that I don't think were ever used. Here is one.

Meanwhile, Back in Kansas

Poor Toto. I don't know the story behind this one, but Toto seems to be cut out from another piece of paper and glued onto this one. The comic practices the cut-up technique that is its subject matter. I love Devin's Kansas landscape here, the vivid but spare land lines, the surreal and strangely beckoning plants, and the one huge flower with distinct leaves in the corner with his signature. I also like Dorothy's expansive and maybe even slightly menacing cape and hair. And that cut out dog, which is just a smudge but perfectly captures the spirit of the dog Toto in the Wizard of Oz film.

1-800-BIG LIPS

Devin Sexson often wrote and drew about lips. Lips were something that could always be bigger. Thin lips were a sign of conformity and surrender. Big lips were a symbol of triumph and identity.
Devin had a story about a box he kept under his bed in which he stored "all of his lips," and sometimes he would reach under that bed and pull out that box and put on all of his lips. The way he performed this story, reaching his arms under the bed and opening that box, made it so incredibly vivid. Then he would put on his big lips, and they were so big that he had to use his arms like a giant lip mouth in front of his face to demonstrate what it was like when all his lips went out way in front of his body, and what would happen when he would buzz those lips.

God, She Lookin' in de Mirror

One of the first times I saw Devin Sexon, back in 1983 or 1984, he told me this poem. It is kind of his cosmic statement: strange, transgressive, surreal, political and ultimately triumphant. Definitely incorrect and questionable on many levels. And also about lips. He definitely had something about lips.
He would occasionally recite this poem at parties or bars or wherever, and his performances were always spectacular in their enthusiasm.  He had a deep booming voice for such a young skinny guy, and he would tell his stories and read his poems with a mock serious authority, like he really meant it, his mussy, static-electricity charged flaming red hair making him look kind of like a poetry-spouting torch.
And here the poem is so magically turned into images, with so many amazing moments, like the lips-only mirror reflection, the odd op art earth, the Reagan-Apocalypse (apoca-lips?), the placement of the Pat Nixon ash-smudge, and those triumphant big lips in the last panel.

No, Your Friend Can't Stay for Dinner

Devin's comics were drawn quickly, but were always staged pretty well. This is one that maybe a few people have seen because you could buy it as a postcard at Cactus Records in Bozeman, Montana in 1985. Devin told me that he wanted to print up some copies of one of his comics and one of mine and that Cactus Records on Main Street would sell them with the other usual postcards, the black and white classic photos of poets and artists, the strange comics by the nationally unknown strange comic artists. And some of those postcards we made sold. We drew them on some nicer paper and made the double borders so they would have the same appearance. The postcard that I drew that was the b-side of this adventure in printing is below.

Devin Not Paying Attention for the Last Time

Devin Vincent Sexson was a wonderful friend with a distinct laugh and a sense of humor that combined biting satire and playful childlike wit. He passed away in the spring of 2015, much too young. These are some of the drawings and comics of his that I collected when I knew him back in the mid 1980's to early 1990's. I'm going to be posting a couple a week until I run out. If you have drawings or comics by Devin, please send them to me and I'll post them too: johnATsloppyfilms.net. Thanks!