An Interview with Joe Andoe

A Conversation with…
Joe Andoe, author of JUBILEE CITY

Q. Today you’re a respected and celebrated painter but not widely known as a writer. Why did you decide to branch out with JUBILEE CITY?

A. Well one night about 5 years ago I was chatting with somebody who told me that I had already told them the story I had just told them.
Ouch.
I hate that.
I hate it when anybody else does it but I hate the thought of me doing it
Sooooooooo much more.
That’s when I bought a little moleskin notebook and a brush pen and I went about writing down every story I ever told more than once so I would never have to tell them again.
They came fast and furious.
They would come anytime they wanted.
It was like shooting sitting ducks.
It was like a ticker tape I would have to write it down no matter where I was as it came out.
I usually would have to write so fast I wouldn’t be able to read it later.
By the way I found out recently the person who told me I had repeated myself was just pulling my leg.

Q. What exactly is JUBILEE CITY?

A. It’s my life story told with no fact checking, with no shame, just told the way I remember it and told the way it affected me.
I start from the beginning with a process that is much like the act of climbing a ladder as opposed to the act of thinking about climbing a ladder.
Seeing as I’m not a trained writer means I’m not a typist either and that means that when I sit down to type out a recollection I often type at the same speed the actual event happened and that’s much slower than if I just thought it.
So it gives me a chance to relive it and see things I haven’t seen since it happened.
It ends up that both the reader and I have a first-hand account.

Q. Your path to becoming a well-known artist and now first time author doesn’t seem like a traditional one. Can you briefly share how you got to where you are today?

A. The story goes like this: I was conceived by two newlywed 19-year-olds from Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1955 near the San Diego Naval Base where my father was in the Navy.
He joined the Navy because poverty was a real thing and the GI bill was their only hope.
I was conceived near the San Diego Naval Base soon before my father went to Japan for two years.
My father didn’t see me until he was discharged when I was almost 18 months old and my mother was a teller at a bank.
Home life was volatile so I stayed outside of the house as much as possible.
I started getting into trouble early.
I had the police called on me for the first time in kindergarten for destroying a neighbor’s brick incarcerator.
In each of my 12 years of school my parents had to come for a meeting to keep me in.
This trend of trouble cornuted for no reason. I went to earn my MFA degree at the University of Oklahoma.
And got married, moved to New York City and had a son and a daughter and started showing my paintings.
The book starts with some of my earliest memories and flows along from milestone to roadblock as I roam around trying to stay out of the house.
I had freedom that looks like neglect by today’s standards.
It looks like I was curious and it looks like that was what got me into so much trouble.
Trouble and curiosity that lasted in some form like drugs or something to a curiosity about this gift of art I had that carried me to New York and into the art world that sometimes clashes with everything I had learned until then.

Q. How have Oklahoma and now New York shaped your artistic sensibility? What is it about each place that resonates so much with you?

A. You don’t know sweet till you taste salty.

Q. Could you describe your process of painting and your process of writing?

A. I cook what I want to eat and the clothes I pick are what I want to wear and so the paintings I paint are of things I want to see and the story I write is the one I want to tell.



Q. One critic has called you a distinctly American artist of the baby boom generation. Do you agree with that? Why or why not?


A. To quote Popeye the Sailor,
“I yam what I yam—“
Or: I’m here when I was here.

Q. Your painting technique involves removing paint to reveal the image, which you describe as “wiping away flesh to reveal the spirit”. Did you take this same approach to your book?

A. The act of writing and painting are both sorta like damage control.
I put it up then I work on it so it stays up.

Q. Are there any tools available to a writer that serve a similar purpose to that of color in a painting? Which skills of yours as a painter translated best to the page?

A. Same as the question above. Or you cook it till it tastes right. I don’t mean to sound glib but I make it the way I like it, so the moral is if you don’t like your own work no one will.

Q. You say that ideally, a painting says more about the viewer than it does about the artist. Do you think the same is true of a memoir?

A. I don’t know if it is, but I feel the same as Norman Mailer did about directing a movie:
“It’s like making love to a three hundred pound woman—” because there is much more to grab on to.

Q. Your story—especially your adolescence—is littered with tales of rebellion, do you still feel rebellious? If so, how do you express it now?

A. I never felt rebellious I was just looking to have a good time. I thought of myself as kind of shy but when I wrote it out I was surprised what this kid got up to.
Besides Rebels wore grey.

Q: You obviously have a following in the art world. Who do you hope will read your memoir?

A. Escape artists, castaways, longshoremen.