MAN, CLOWN, ARTIST
Local illustrator and cartoonist Joe Lee’s clownish past
Spend some time talking and laughing with Joe Lee, a local book illustrator and cartoonist, and you’re likely to think, “this guy’s a clown.”
And you’d be right. After graduating from IU with a degree in medieval history in 1975, Lee pursued his boyhood dream of becoming a performer by training at Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Clown College. After three months he was offered a contract and began his career as a professional circus clown.
“It was totally thrilling and liberating,” says Lee, who at 53 still has a clown’s mischievous smile and elastic features. “We were always coming up with new gags, doing a lot of improvisation. Sometimes even the other circus performers would stop and watch. That’s when you know you’re really on to something.”
Lee’s fascination with clowns began early on. Like many kids, Lee grew up watching the children’s show Captain Kangaroo. He was especially captivated by “Banana Man,” a famous vaudevillian and clown whose signature act consisted of building a small train from a suitcase he’d carry onstage and filling it with bananas, bass fiddles, and other props he’d pull from a large overcoat.
“And then he’d ride off on the train,” says Lee, his eyes lighting up at the memory. “That was the single most amazing thing I’d seen at that age, and it stayed with me.”
Lee spent five years with Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey’s Circus World theme park and the King Brothers-Cole and Hoxie Brothers circuses. Eventually tiring of the constant travel and insularity of the small circus community, Lee left life on the road and under the big top and moved to New York City, where he put his clowning skills to use as a street performer selling self-designed postcard.
Impressed by Lee’s work, one customer directed him to the Art Students League, an organization offering low-cost art classes to the general public. At the League, Lee, who’d started drawing as a kid, studied etching, print making and illustration, and was soon selling his work to galleries and getting illustration jobs with publishers.
After several years in the city, though, Lee started pining for home.
“I was really a country boy at heart, and I noticed that pigs and chickens were starting to appear in my work more and more,” Lee says. “So I thought it was time to come back to Indiana.”
Attracted by Bloomington’s unique blend of small town charm and cosmopolitan culture, Lee moved to town in 1987 and has been here ever since. Now an established book illustrator and editorial cartoonist for the Saturday Bloomington-Herald Times, Lee has written and illustrated several books for Writers and Readers Publishing’s “For Beginners” series. One of his favorites was “Clowns for Beginners.”
“Clowns have a rich history that most people don’t know about. It was a great to have the opportunity to work on something that’s meant so much to me.”