Drolleries!
Celebrating the art of Polly Keener

Drollery (circa 1597 A.D.) (plural: Drolleries):
1. Something that is droll, often a comic picture or drawing
2. The act of jesting
3. Whimsical humor

Droll (circa 1623 A.D.):
Having an odd and amusing quality

I have many childhood memories of my Mom hard at work at our kitchen table, often late into the night, working on these drawings. There was never any shortage of art supplies around our house and our small, square, and semi-lopsided kitchen table was perpetually crammed to collapsing with papers, pencils, paint, etc. -- a small area carved out for my placemat. I always marveled at her ability to bring paper, colored pencil, and ink to life. She is also the only Mom I know from my generation to encourage reading comic books!

Mom took 35mm slide photographs of many of her artworks before selling them or giving them away so that she would still have a record of them. The thought of a couple of three-ring binders of slides being the sole existing record of these artworks was too much for my 21st-Century digital photographer’s mind -- used to having multiple, distributed backups of all my photos to try to ensure permanance -- to handle. Using a slide scanner, I scanned them and now have many copies of each in many different places. Even the printing of this book is part of this effort.

I hope all readers of this book enjoy her efforts as much as our family has. Way to go, Mom!

Ted Keener
December 2014