Giggles at a funeral

The jaws of an angry opossum gape at the viewer, flashing razor-sharp teeth and a tongue that’s blood purple with aggression. Two words, torn from a newspaper in cold-blooded kidnapper style, appear above and below this marsupial nightmare: “HERE kiTTy.”

Jeffrey Gaff’s contribution to the “Elemental Offerings” exhibit at north Lansing’s Struk Studio is a modest one, but it’s not without interest.

For one thing, the first “E” in the word “HERE” is the uppercase “E” from the “City PULSE” cover logo. And there’s the “y” from “City” in a droll tableau depicting a cute little camper, with the caption “HOLidAy.”

Unfortunately, a Sherman tank seems to be hauling that cozy camper to a war zone.

Gaff, who goes by the pen name Séafra Duffy, likens his drawings to “giggles at a funeral.” His self-portrait is a sad skeleton gazing at a typewriter, emblazoned with the word “ReFLECTiOn.” Connoisseurs of City Pulse typography will instantly spot the white “i” with the red tittle.

Someone stop me! There’s a fancy “E,” obviously rendered by artist Dennis Preston. There’s a “Q” from a Quality Dairy ad.

Gaff tears letters from copies of City Pulse to create the phrases pasted on his drawings.

OK, enough with the font fetishism. It’s time to address Gaff’s off-the-wall, brain-worm images. A butterfly resting on bones? A seahorse in a cowboy boot? The Hamburglar on Mount Rushmore?

Gaff has had a rough time since he moved to Lansing from Fort Wayne, Indiana, about two years ago, and he’s working it out in his own gonzo way. About 3 feet of wall space at Struk, along with a binder packed with more images, tell the whole story — if you know how to look.

Gaff is a ramp supervisor for UPS at Capital Region International Airport. Every weekday evening, he orchestrates a heavy-duty dance of about seven semi-trucks, a dozen small feeder planes and a fleet of package cars.

In about an hour and a half, his crew consolidates and loads everything onto a big jet, headed to the main hub in Louisville, Kentucky.

“You don’t know whether it’s going to be late, what the weather will be, whether the plane is going to break,” Gaff said.

How did he end up in Lansing?

“Like every good story, it started with a girl,” he said.

Gaff is a passionate rescuer of old typewriters, but he’s no mere collector. He dusts them off and puts them to work.

His pandemic book, “100 Days, 50 Bottles, and a Typewriter: Locked Down and Grounded in Flyover Country,” is a zig-zagging EKG of daily impressions and musings. (A post-pandemic sequel followed: “More Days, More Bottles, and the Same Damn Typewriter: Unlocked and Rolling to Mountain Country.”)

His website, typewriterfox.com, is headlined by a jet-black Smith Corona model that’s scrawled with the motto, “This machine kills memes.”

A female reader from Lansing was intrigued by his blog.

“I was kind of known in the typewriter scene, and she reached out,” Gaff said. He followed the electrons all the way to Lansing to make it physical.

“And then she decided we were done,” he said.

The resulting confusion, dislocation and heartbreak provided plenty of grist for his typewriters.

His most recent blog entries chronicle his up-and-down Lansing days, from the sudden death of a friend to quotidian observations on “the land of QD,” with its cornfields and construction barrels.

One afternoon, while doodling with a set of Sharpies at a coffee shop, he suddenly discovered an impertinent-looking fox on the table before him.

“I thought, ‘he’s gangsta,’” Gaff said.

There happened to be an issue of City Pulse nearby. He tore out some letters to form the label “GANGSTA,” and voila — his first artwork.

After the fox, a series of gonzo images flooded through his brain. The Sharpies obeyed, moving with a will of their own. Many copies of City Pulse bit the dust.

Things you can touch, from typewriters to print newspapers, keep him tethered to the physical world.

“Honestly, City Pulse is the one anchor I’ve had since I moved here — that tactile connection to a new city,” he said. “It’s been a friend to me, especially during those first few weeks at a coffee shop.”

Once he had accumulated a stack of images, he stopped by Struk Studio, not far from the airport, and showed them to owner and artist David Such.

“He graciously incorporated them into the show,” Gaff said. “To me, these are just doodles. They’re silly. As a collection, I appreciate them more.”

Gaff’s discomfiture at the exhibition’s Aug. 10 opening reception is the subject of a recent blog entry. He confesses that his “excitement at the stupid shit I drew” moved him out of his comfort zone. He was so rattled that he showed up on time.

Accustomed to dwelling in “the periphery of the overnight” — usually the tarmac at Capital Region International Airport — he found himself blinking like an opossum in the light of sudden attention. He recalls counting the steps to the exits and wondering if a couch at the front of the gallery was part of the art or “intended for actual asses.”

Suddenly, a familiar woman walks into the gallery, and … well, check out the blog entry to get the rest of the story.

The blog is so up to date that a recent entry mentions this interview and a forthcoming story in City Pulse.

Back at you, Typewriter Fox.