It's Howdy Doodle Time: Mail Art from Amy Irwin and Diane Keys

Doodling is in right now. My spouse, a highly trained, greatly experienced fine artist is a doodler. Our gallery in Virginia is about to feature a crowdfunded doodle-art show featuring works by Robin and a handful of other professional doodlers. I've even taken to doodling some artist trading cards lately. Nonetheless, when I saw this nice big envelope from Amy Irwin in my mailbox, doodling was not what I expected. In fact, doodling was not what I found...at least not at first.

I love the "Gone Postal" stamp. Don't you?  

The first thing out of the envelope was this:

A fine collage on cardboard. Bits of cut and torn papers, pieces of text, a bluebird and a ground of dark paint strokes are all sealed under a veil of acrylic medium. Very nice!

But I dug a bit deeper and soon retrieved this:

A doodle bookie made on a folded postcard. Sweet!

Opening the little book one comes to two trifold folios that are stitched in. The first one is introduced with this little hand-drawn iris. Opening the folio brings you to this:

Three blank pages begging for doodle works. The second folio is made on green card stock, and it has blank front and back covers as well as the three internal pages awaiting some creative doodling. Attached to the book is a note from Amy requesting that once the book has been filled it is to be returned to her. So I have some doodling to to, and I need to find some doodling friends to add to this gem.

Now for more of the same, but completely different, and different is exactly what I expect to find on and in an envelope from Diane Keys, the Empress of DKULT.

 

"Not mainstream compatible in any way." I could not have said it better myself.  As is the usual case, Diane's missals are loaded with lots of materials gathered from the street or from has vast storage vaults of trash, and this was the case. However, the heart of the art in this mailing was a folio of doodles meant to form the heart of a collaborative project, not unlike Amy's book. 

Now the question with materials from DK is always: where did this come from and is it safe to handle without a hazmat suit? Are these trash gleanings from the local schoolyard? Is it Diane's original work? Or can we believe, as suggested by a closer inspection of the last image, that this is the work of Tony Keys, not Diane. I believe this is a signed masterpiece from the crown prince of DKULT.  Well, what it is may be a bit mysterious, but what it will become is anyone's guess. Between Amy's bookie (or Boekje in Dutch and Afrikaans) and these pages from DK, I clearly have some serious doodling to doodle!

Thanks Amy and DK. I'm so glad I'm married to both of you!