Autobiography of Hyperrealist Sculptor John DeAndrea

By John DeAndrea and Elaine Eldridge

John DeAndrea, an internationally recognized sculptor famous for his eerily lifelike nudes, developed his art while coping with the effects of sexual abuse by a female housekeeper that began at age 6, years of physical abuse by an alcoholic father, and a left arm made useless by childhood polio. "Autobiography" explains an artist and his art. But the mission closer to DeAndrea's heart is helping men who suffered boyhood trauma but haven't managed to talk about it.
DeAndrea tells how he moved from his violent, colorful boyhood on the wrong side of the tracks in Little Italy in Denver, Colorado, to solo exhibitions in New York, Paris, Brussels, and Munich and over 100 group exhibitions worldwide. As a boy, he struggled with Catholic Church–induced guilt for being sexually coerced by the housekeeper. Her warning not to tell began a lifelong habit of secrecy that kept DeAndrea separate from the people around him. As a young man, he suffered debilitating panic attacks that forced him to stay in familiar surroundings, and he missed his first opening in New York.
DeAndrea never blames others. He doesn't complain. He doesn't preach, but he urges readers not to dwell on the negative. "Autobiography" is the story of a boy and the man he became who kept putting one foot in front of the other to achieve both success and love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Apr 19, 2021
• ISBN: 9781736213001

Book preview

cover.jpg

Cover photo—Allegory: After Courbet (1988), State Art Collection, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, Australia

Autobiography of Hyperrealist Sculptor John DeAndrea © 2021 John DeAndrea

ISBN: 978-1-7362130-0-1

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

First edition

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

PROLOGUE

1 LITTLE ITALY

2 DON’T TELL ANYONE

3 DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT

4 WHATEVER HE WANTED

5 FEAR, FREIGHT TRAINS

6 MY HIGH SCHOOL EDUCATION

7 BOULDER, ALBUQUERQUE, AND BACK TO DENVER

8 IF THEY TALK TO ME, I’LL SELL THEM

9 PANIC

10 HYPERREALISM

11 COURSE CORRECTION

12 LOSSES AND GAINS

GOLDEN, COLORADO – 2020

EXHIBITIONS

Solo

Group

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful to each of these people for taking the time to add detail and personal recollections to John’s story: Arden Anderson, Janice Dahl, Lorraine DeAndrea, Jane Fudge, Linda Keller, Carlo Lamagna, William Leavitt, Judi Oyama, and Marie Vaziri.

Thanks to the Denver Art Museum for permission to quote Jane Fudge, Galatea and Company (1996).

John, you are an ace.

Elaine Eldridge

PROLOGUE

Everything that happened to me led to my art. I was afraid all the time for years, but I never thought to myself, Bad things happened to me, so I’ll make beautiful sculptures. What happened is a little more complicated than that, although my art isn’t complicated. I don’t think I am, either, but there were a few twists in the road as I traveled from the wrong side of the tracks in north Denver to exhibitions of my work in New York, San Francisco, Paris, Brussels, Vienna, and Munich. This is the story of how I got there, and what happened after that.

1 LITTLE ITALY

You may wonder about my many nudes in quiet poses. It’s true I’m a man and I like looking at women, but after my childhood I wanted peaceful, and the young women who modeled for me, and the statues I made of them, were peaceful as well as beautiful. My childhood was anything but peaceful. Looking back, I’m a little shocked at all the things that happened to me.

The plaster ripped out all my hair when Bill pried the mold from my skin. The bacon grease I’d smeared on my body didn’t stop the plaster from sticking to me, but it must have helped a little, or the skin would’ve come off with the hair. It hurt like hell.

I had the idea to make a cast of my own body. I built a shallow wooden box outside the little house Bill and I rented and put sand in the bottom of it, like a kid’s sand box, and stretched out with my feet dangling over the edge. I put a rolled-up magazine in my mouth so I could breathe, and Bill poured 100 pounds of plaster over me. Pouring the plaster on my face just about killed him, but he did it. Except for my feet, I was completely covered. It was like being buried alive. No sound, no light, no breeze on my skin. The plaster took almost an hour to set. I wanted a perfect mold, so I didn’t move at all. Once the plaster started to set, of course, I couldn’t move.

At first the wet plaster was icy on my skin. But as it set, it got hot, hot enough to burn. My feet were sticking out so I could signal Bill. Wiggling my foot from side to side meant I was okay; up and down meant, Get me out now! When I could no longer stand the rapidly building heat, I moved my foot up and down as fast as I could. When Bill lifted up on the mold, I came with it, and he had to break the plaster in pieces to get me out. I’d worn a hair net to protect my head, but all the rest of the hair on my body where the plaster touched was torn out. I was badly swollen, and my face—I didn’t have a beard at the time—was a mess. Bill got me out before I was burned. The first thing I saw was his horrified expression. He wasn’t sure what he was going to find under the plaster. But Tiger, my Doberman, was happy. He tried eating the bacon-coated plaster, but he gave up pretty quickly.

Except for a mild case of shock, I was happy, too, because Bill didn’t completely destroy the mold when he released me. He was able to pry off one large piece that extended from my chin to partway down my thigh and included all of my chest and an arm. Later I poured the negative mold—the side of the mold that had touched my body and had all my hair sticking out of it—in plaster to get the positive mold I wanted. When I removed the positive mold, not just the shape of my body, but the hair and the pores on my skin, were reproduced perfectly. It was amazing. I couldn’t believe the detail I had captured. I had been hooked on the human figure since taking my first life drawing class in college. I wanted to make figures that were completely real, and this first attempt, even though I almost did myself in, convinced me I could succeed.

I wore shorts for this adventure in realism, by the way. I’m crazy, not masochistic.

Bill Leavitt and I lived near the Flatirons, part of the foothills that rise abruptly on the west side of Boulder. We were art students at the University of Colorado. After I graduated I took that mold back to Denver with me, but I lost it about a year later when I threw out all my work from college. I was prolific. I had hundreds of drawings and almost seventy-five paintings, most of them around 8 × 8 or 8 × 7 feet, stacked in my parents’ garage. There were so many drawings I tied them together with string in bales. I’m not sure what happened. I was angry a lot in those days, and the lack of respect at home made me mad. I was beginning to see myself as an artist, but no one in my family did. Even Mike, my favorite cousin, thought I was nuts. In Little Italy, the part of north Denver where I grew up, an Italian guy like me couldn’t just announce he was an artist and expect to be taken seriously. Real artists were Italian guys like da Vinci or Michelangelo—really important and dead for a long time. Anyway, I gathered all the paintings and drawings, all my work, borrowed a truck, and dropped them at the dump.

I think part of the trouble I had as a young man, being chronically angry and arguing too much, was thinking I should be like my dad. My dad used to shout when he was angry, which you could count on like the sun coming up. I was fortunate as a boy to know men who weren’t violent and angry, but it was always my dad who was most important, no matter what he did to me. He didn’t like me much. I can only remember one time, maybe two, when he seemed proud of me. The first was when he organized my doubleheader with the two Tommys after they sat on me in the street and poured dirt in my hair. I complained to my father when he got home from work, and he said, Call those guys out. So I rounded them up. Tommy One was at least a year older than me, and Tommy Two was two years older. I was the little guy, five years old. My father said, Okay, you’re gonna fight, one at a time. So I got myself together, and I fought Tommy One. He hit me and I hit him, back and forth, punch, punch, punch, and I think I won. I made him back up the hill, and my father said that fight was over. Then my dad called the other Tommy, and I fought, or tried to fight, him. The age difference gave Tommy Two a huge advantage. He slugged me as hard as he could. I got a few hits in, but the outcome was obvious from the start. Finally my father said, That’s enough. You’ve had your fight. Then he gave me all the change he had in his pocket and said, This is for you. You did a really good job.

I think he hoped, in spite of my disappointing tendency to take after my mother, that I may yet turn into a proper Italian son. He was a coward himself, but he knew I should be able to fight back if someone gave me trouble. He was right. In Little Italy, the part of north Denver where I grew up, you needed to know how to fight.

Imagine the stink parents would raise today if some other kid’s father arranged a fistfight!

The only other time he seemed proud of me was when a policeman brought me home after I’d been caught stealing two knives. I was eleven. Someone had stolen my pigeons. I found them penned up not far from our house, and I needed a knife (the second knife was for a friend) to cut the wire so I could retrieve them. The store owner caught me and called the police. I gave the owner a false name, of course, but the policeman who came pried my name and address out of me. My father didn’t say anything about my stealing and having a cop turn up at the house. He seemed, secretly and quietly, pleased with my escapade.

Other than those two times, I can’t remember my dad ever thinking I was any good. He rarely bothered telling me I was worthless. He showed his lack of approval rather than talking about it. The first physical violence I remember happened when I was four. Until then my dad was my hero. He wasn’t around much when I was little. He took out-of-state jobs, like ironworking in Salt Lake City, and was away for weeks at a time. I was thrilled when he came home. Just being with him made me happy.

For Christmas that year I got a cap pistol. I went to play with the younger Tommy—we remained friends for years, even after he poured dirt in my hair—who took it apart. I ran home holding the pieces, sure my dad could reassemble it. But he had a strange look on his face when he saw the pieces in my hands. I didn’t understand what was wrong. You’d think I’d burned the house down rather than broken a cheap toy. He started shouting, crossed the room quickly, and knocked my hat off. And then, in one smooth motion, he bent down, grabbed one of my boots in each hand, and flipped me upside down as he straightened, arms extended. The walls and table rushed past as I swung through the air. My feet slipped from the boots and I dropped headfirst on the floor. I didn’t cry.

His later violence was far worse, but at the time it was the worst beating I could imagine. I had a knot on the top of my head where it hit the floor. But more than pain, what I remember was my shock at his betrayal.

I never hated him for what he did. Not just dropping me on my head, but all the later beatings. If you didn’t grow up with a violent parent, or even if you did, you may find this odd. It’s hard to explain. He was my father. He was a snake. He was an untrustworthy snake, but he was my snake. For a few months when I was fourteen I wanted to kill him, but other than that I tried to love him, and I wanted him to love me. But even at four years old I somehow knew to stop trusting him. There’s a difference between not trusting someone and hating him. You can cope with not trusting someone. You can’t get around hating a person.

My father was the golden boy in his family, the chosen one who could do no wrong. The story was that he didn’t speak a word till he was five years old, not because he was slow to learn (my dad was anything but slow), but because all his older siblings did everything for him and he didn’t need to bother talking. When he wasn’t shouting or sleeping, the man I knew talked nonstop, presumably to make up for lost time. One time in high school I went deer hunting with him. We were gone about four days. He never stopped talking. On the way home, so help me god, I almost jumped from the moving car to get away from his voice.

When he was angry he’d carry on about being tied down with too many children and what idiots he had to work with and how his boss was an imbecile and the government was crooked and the neighbors were shiftless thieves who didn’t deserve what they had. Even when he wasn’t angry he talked and yakked and shouted. He never shut up. Sometimes he’d shout at all of us, and he used to shout when he hit or kicked me. Later, when I hired people to help me in my studio, I chose people who didn’t talk. I needed silence to work. My cousin Kathy was really skilled, but she chattered constantly. I explained more than once that she needed to be quiet so I could concentrate, but she couldn’t stop talking and finally had to go.

My mother and three sisters and I rarely knew what would set my dad off. Spoiled people like him fuel their own anger. Sometimes the trigger was something small, like the broken cap pistol, or if I missed a spot when watering the lawn. Many times he was just angry. I doubt he knew why. One morning he hurled a full bottle of orange juice at my head. I was sitting in the kitchen with my back to him and didn’t know anything was wrong. He was a good shot. The heavy glass bottle cracked me on the back of my head before bouncing to the floor.

Christmas was an exception to his unpredictability. I’m sure you’ve already noticed we weren’t like the blandly smiling family in a Norman Rockwell holiday painting, but being around my father at Christmas was even worse than the rest of the year. Each year he would decorate the joint—we called his current bar or restaurant the joint—beautifully. He’d hang evergreen boughs and decorations from the ceiling and put all his artistic talent to work making the joint attractive for the holidays. At home he’d put up a Christmas tree. If the tree’s branches were a little sparse, he’d drill holes in the trunk and fit boughs into the holes to fill out the thin spots. Then he’d put the lights and most of the decorations on the tree. All the time we waited for the bomb to explode. Nobody talked much. Nobody even moved much.

Our job was to put icicles on the tree. The icicles in the early 1950s were crinkled and wrinkled and easily tangled. My perfectionist father wanted me and my older sister, Joyce, to straighten and smooth them one by one before hanging them, one by one, on the tree. Boring as hell, and it took forever. If he caught one of us putting the icicles on wrinkled or twisted together the bomb would explode and the shouting would start and he’d begin throwing and hitting. But he was never completely out of control. He never damaged the tree during an icicle tantrum. When it was over, he’d sometimes finish decorating the tree with snow he made from soap and water. He made a really nice tree.

Christmases were miserable.

At the table when we’d eat spaghetti on Sundays, Joyce would talk to me with her eyes: Quiet, quiet. She’d look at me a certain way, and I’d know a blowup was coming. When I was older I could see the signs, but in the beginning I relied on Joyce. She was a year and a half older than me, but it wasn’t that extra time dealing with our father that gave her an edge. She was always good at reading him. He’d put his fork down and begin by talking quietly and intently. He’d keep his voice low, and if you didn’t know him you wouldn’t realize that he was slowly working himself up. But then he’d start talking a little faster and a little louder. His hands would curl into fists. He’d add to his anger till he was shouting, and bit by bit he got madder and madder. Then it was time to look out. My mother saw the looks that passed between me and Joyce. She saw what Joyce saw, but she simply waited for the explosion without warning us. My mother rarely tried to calm him down. It was like Christmas. We all just waited.

Fortunately these meals didn’t happen often because he was at work, and when I was older I refused to eat with him. We used to sit in a cramped nook that held a rectangular table with two benches on the long sides of the table. There was just room for Mom and my three sisters and me to slide in and sit down. My dad sat on a chair at one end, and the other place of honor was reserved for the end of the table against the wall. One time he upended the table because the salt shaker was plugged. He shook it once, twice, three times, and that was it. Ba-boom! A glass hit the wall behind my head. He shouted and grasped the edge of the table as he stood up. The table went up, the meal went down, spaghetti, forks, dishes, glasses sliding, clattering to the floor. Dinner was over, and if you hadn’t eaten much, that was too bad. My mother used to clean up the mess. She never said anything.

You didn’t want to get trapped in the nook, because it was too easy for him to grab you. A few times I was cornered, but most of the time I was fast enough to slip out. Once I was free of the nook and in the kitchen, it was easy