David Birkey and Marie Gardeski are the artists behind Imaginary Animal. They offer fine art prints of their original drawings and paintings alongside meticulously crafted objects and accessories. David designs mazes by hand, carefully routing a challenging path from start to finish, resulting in a cool graphic combined with a fun activity. Marie has been sewing almost as long as she has been drawing and enjoys designing and creating clothing and accessories, recently using textiles printed with her own whimsical patterns. David and Marie share a sunny studio filled with plants and music in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
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Marie and david met through mail art. That is to say, a mutual friend encouraged each to send something to the other. (m & d were living 100s of miles away from each other at the time). So the Postman delivered david's collaged postcard (purposely split in two) and marie's typewritten golden letter. Later, they met in person for the first time at the same friend's wedding. Marie made the wedding dress and david was a groomsman. Their first collaboration was installing the wedding decorations. It was a great success. (david even made the twinkle lights flash "disco style" when the dance music played).
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Marie opened this shop back in early 2007 (before meeting david). She called it Foliage. When she officially teamed up with david she decided they needed a new name. Since they had recently started to refer to their studio as "The Museum of Imaginary Animals" they decided that "Imaginary Animal" would be the perfect shop name.

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View our collaborative artwork: http://gardeskibirkey.tumblr.com/