Andoe, Joe 1955-

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Andoe, Joe 1955-

PERSONAL:

Born 1955, in Tulsa, OK; divorced; children: one son, one daughter. Education: University of Oklahoma, M.F.A., 1981.

ADDRESSES:

Office—113 West 27th St., 4th Fl., New York, NY 10011. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Artist, 1981—. Exhibitions: Solo exhibitions include Oklahoma City Art Annex, Oklahoma City, OK, 1982; Tom Cugliani Gallery, New York, NY, 1988; Blum Helman Gallery, New York, NY, 1989, 1992, 1993, 1995, 1996, 1999, 2001; University of Oklahoma Museum of Art, Norman, 1990; Galerie Daniel Templon, Paris, France, 1990; Galerie Kaj Forsblom, Helsinki, Finland, 1991; Yodo Gallery, Osaka, Japan, 1991; Jason Rubell Gallery, Palm Beach, FL, 1992; Millivernti Sperone, Torino, Italy, 1995; Winston Wächter Fine Art, New York, NY, 1996; Allene LaPides Gallery, Santa Fe, NM, 1998; Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, OK, 1999; University at Buffalo Art Gallery Research Center in Art & Culture, Buffalo, NY, 2000; SOMA Gallery, LaJolla, CA, 2000; Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE, 2001; Gallery Samtuh, Chongdam-dong Kangnam, Korea, 2002; Feigen Contemporary, New York, NY, 2004; Longview Museum of Fine Arts, Longview, TX, 2005; Earl McGrath Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, 2007. Work exhibited in public collections, including Dallas Museum of Art; Denver Museum of Art; Detroit Institute of Art, Gallery of Art at Washington University; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Museum of Fine Art, Boston, MA; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art; St. Louis Museum of Art; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; and Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Artwork has appeared in periodicals, including New York Times, Smock, New Yorker, Town & Country, and Reader's Digest.

WRITINGS:

Jubilee City: A Memoir at Full Speed, William Morrow (New York, NY), 2007.

Contributor to periodicals, including Bald Ego, Bomb Magazine, and Open City.

SIDELIGHTS:

Growing up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, painter Joe Andoe imagined he would spend his adult years in a series of blue-collar jobs. Instead, Andoe enrolled in a community college art class and discovered his true calling. More than two decades later, his landscapes infused with the animals, people, and vistas of the American Midwest hang in prestigious museums, including New York's Museum of Modern Art and Whitney Museum. Andoe has exhibited his paintings, drawings, and prints at galleries in America and abroad, earning praise for compositions that "aspire to an eerie, evocative stillness," to quote New York Times Book Review columnist Janet Maslin.

Andoe never aspired to be a writer, but when he found himself recounting events from his daredevil youth to friends in New York City, he decided to compile episodes of his nearly self-destructive behavior into a memoir. The resulting title, Jubilee City: A Memoir at Full Speed, relies upon short vignettes to capture the childhood, teen years, and young adulthood of a hard-drinking, drug-abusing man who managed to achieve success and sobriety after years of aberrant behavior. In an interview on the Book Thieves Web site, Andoe said of his book: "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." Andoe added that he never saw himself as rebellious, just curious about drinking and drugs, women and fast cars. "I was just looking to have a good time," he said.

Despite years of cocaine and alcohol abuse, Andoe worked very hard to create his body of paintings. Interest from New York galleries did not lessen his work ethic; if anything, he pushed himself harder while he mastered the politics of the high-stakes art world. His memoir offers candid glimpses of day-to-day existence as a stay-at-home parent in an unhappy marriage who nevertheless managed to forge a career in a competitive field of endeavor. According to Maslin, "Andoe's whole career and his penchant for painting pensive-looking horses began as an expression of … independence."

A contributor to Kirkus Reviews felt that Jubilee City "will echo with uncomfortable familiarity for anybody who grew up in the country's dusty middle." Donna Seaman, writing in Booklist, felt that the "edgy self-portrait connects to the mythology of the outlaw painter." A reviewer for Publishers Weekly called the book a "charming memoir" in which Andoe's "keen observations make the everyday strange and fresh."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Andoe, Joe, Jubilee City: A Memoir at Full Speed, William Morrow (New York, NY), 2007.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, June 1, 2007, Donna Seaman, review of Jubilee City, p. 26.

Kirkus Reviews, May 15, 2007, review of Jubilee City.

New York Times Book Review, August 9, 2007, Janet Maslin, review of Jubilee City, p. 9; August 19, 2007, "Barry Falls," p. 16.

Publishers Weekly, May 7, 2007, review of Jubilee City, p. 52; June 4, 2007, "PW Talks with Joe Andoe: You Can Take the Boy out of Texas … In Jubilee City, Joe Andoe Traces His Life from a Childhood in Texas to Successful Painter in New York City," p. 38.

USA Today, August 30, 2007, Bob Minzesheimer, "‘Jubilee City’: Vivid Landscape of an Artist's Life," p. 5.