I Was Here, Pt. 3

Here is the third in a series of drawings and writings that came to me in a letter from Devin probably in 1986. Here he discovers that he can write on both sides of the paper. The face is a box and the lines are twisted as if there was space to be filled and something had to fill it. I see some script and a profile, some attempts at language and expression in the marks on the left side. Not only does Devin realize that he can draw on both sides of the paper, he demonstrates this just by drawing, just by marking it up. He's spewing out his guts in lines because there is a blank sheet of paper and something has to go on it, something has to deface that other side.

I Was Here Pt. 2

Here is the second page in Devin's letter to me, an adventure in color and words and images in several parts.

I Was Here, Pt. 1

This is the first page of a comic that Devin sent me in a letter when he was in Minneapolis and I was in Bozeman. The paper had gotten wet over the years and that made the front and back fade kind of nearly into each other, which just adds to the mystery and confusion of the whole thing. Faces fade in and out and battle with the text. Yellow and orange, like flame, like the lines, like flame.

Do You Remember the Winter of '81?

Here's an envelope collage the Devin made for a letter he sent me. It's cold outside in these days of approaching Trumpreich and I keep on thinking about what Devin would have made of the election of Donald Trump. It is something beyond the wildest parody. Here is a relic of a tasty hot tomato soup lunch and wondering if we remember a winter that would have been five or six years ago when Devin sent that letter. I don't think I can recall much of what the winter was like five years ago. It was probably cold in parts.

The 'Vert Want Louise Brooks

In honor of Louise Brooks' 110th birthday, today, November 14, here is one by Devin where the 'Vert is walking up behind silent movie star Louise Brooks. The 'Vert looks a little more benign than usual here, and Louise Brooks looks like she can handle him anyway.
The election of Donald Trump as president last week is something that Devin would have taken with his usual scathing satire and intelligence. Trump is a figure almost beyond satire but Devin's ability to take such figures to task in his drawings and writing really would have been something to see and hear.

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.