Oral history interview with Joy Episalla, 2016 February 23 and March 17 Funded by the Keith Haring Foundation. Contact Information Reference Department Archives of American Art Smithsonian Institution Washington. D.C. 20560 www.aaa.si.edu/askus Transcript Preface The following oral history transcript is the result of a recorded interview with Joy Episalla on 2016 February 23- March 17. The interview took place in New York, N.Y., and was conducted by Cynthia Carr for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. This interview is part of the Archives of American Art's Visual Arts and the AIDS Epidemic: An Oral History Project. Joy Episalla and Cynthia Carr have reviewed the transcript. Their corrections and emendations appear below in brackets with initials. This transcript has been lightly edited for readability by the Archives of American Art. The reader should bear in mind that they are reading a transcript of spoken, rather than written, prose. Interview CYNTHIA CARR: Okay. This is Cynthia Carr interviewing Joy Episalla, at Joy's home in New York, New York, in the East Village on February 23, 2016, for the Archives of American Art Smithsonian Institution, Card Number One. So Joy, could you say your name and spell Episalla? JOY EPISALLA: Sure. Joy Episalla. And it's E-P-I-S-A-L-L-A. CYNTHIA CARR: Your date of birth? JOY EPISALLA: August 17, 1957. CYNTHIA CARR: And where were you born? JOY EPISALLA: Bronxville, New York. CYNTHIA CARR: Oh. Um, so did you grow up there? JOY EPISALLA: No, just happened to be where the hospital was. My parents were living in Yonkers— CYNTHIA CARR: Oh. Oh. JOY EPISALLA: —and so, yeah, that was I guess the nearest hospital to where they lived. CYNTHIA CARR: Okay. What are your parents' names? JOY EPISALLA: My dad's name was Charles Episalla, and my mother's is Joy Episalla. I'm named after my mother, but really her name is Gioia, G-I-O-I-A. And that would have been my name, except that my mother had a lot of problems with that in school— CYNTHIA CARR: Oh, yes. JOY EPISALLA: —so when I came along, by that time she was Joy, and so am I. So there you go. CYNTHIA CARR: Right. Now when you were a girl were you interested in art then? JOY EPISALLA: Yeah. From pretty early on. I mean, some of my best moments were at my grandmother's dining room table. CYNTHIA CARR: Drawing, or— JOY EPISALLA: Drawing, you know, coloring in the beginning, you know, young—young, and then starting to draw things like Mickey Mouse and Winkey and all those things that were in The Sunday Times— CYNTHIA CARR: Oh yeah. Uh-huh [Affirmative]. JOY EPISALLA: —you know the newspaper. And watching movies with her. She was fabulous. Ruby Keeler films and musicals and stuff, and you know making drawings. And I had the best thing, which was, I had a little closet there—I was really already out of the closet, but nobody knew—where I kept stuff so when she was, I don't know, doing her thing I would play there. And I also had this huge coloring book that was Alice in Wonderland, but it was almost as tall as me. CYNTHIA CARR: Wow. JOY EPISALLA: Which I think actually—we'll probably get to later—but I think it actually had some very interesting influence on me, actually. [They laugh.] CYNTHIA CARR: Really? Alice in Wonderland? JOY EPISALLA: Alice in Wonderland and the size of this book. It was larger than life size— CYNTHIA CARR: Oh. Uh-huh [Affirmative]. JOY EPISALLA: —it was almost as tall as me, so were the characters, and then I got to like—you know, work them out. CYNTHIA CARR: Hmmm. And this was when you were in grade school? JOY EPISALLA: Yeah. I'm in grade school. Yeah. CYNTHIA CARR: Yeah. And then what about high school? Did you take art classes? JOY EPISALLA: Oh yeah. So all through grade school, you know, you have art classes, and that was my thing. CYNTHIA CARR: Uh-huh [Affirmative]. JOY EPISALLA: I really liked it for sure. Yeah, by high school I got real lucky. I had a great art teacher. CYNTHIA CARR: Oh, what was her—what was that name? JOY EPISALLA: His name was—oh my God, now I'm going to space out because I just had it in my head. CYNTHIA CARR: Oh, sorry. JOY EPISALLA: Hart, his name was Mr. Hart. And I'm trying to remember his first name—Bill. CYNTHIA CARR: Bill Hart, okay. JOY EPISALLA: Yeah. He was really great. CYNTHIA CARR: What was it about him? JOY EPISALLA: Well, he definitely took an interest in me, in the sense that he was the first person to put a 35mm camera in my hand. And then I ended up doing all the yearbooks, so this is like probably 7th grade. Because by 7th grade, in the school that I went to, you had Kindergarten through I think 4th—no Kindergarten through 3rd, and 4th through 6th, and then at 7th you went over to the high school. CYNTHIA CARR: Uh-huh [Affirmative]. JOY EPISALLA: So, that's when I first met him. And I'd hang out in his class all the time, you know that's where I went if I wasn't going to go somewhere else. CYNTHIA CARR: Yeah, right. JOY EPISALLA: Yeah, so he not only—yeah—started me with the camera, but he got me started in print making. So I was always drawing and painting then in his class. He started us with oil paints, I mean I tried a bunch of stuff and I loved it. And you know, won a couple of contests. You know, it was actually quite illustration-like. I was also [taking –JE] AP Bio at the time, and I actually thought I was going to be a medical illustrator. Who knew I would get my medical training in a whole other way? But I guess we'll get to that later. CYNTHIA CARR: Right. JOY EPISALLA: But in any case, he started me in printmaking and he took me to Manhattan College on his own time and I did an etching there. So he was really quite interesting. And he actually you know, by the time it was time to apply for colleges, he thought it would be great if I went to a— CYNTHIA CARR: Went to art school? JOY EPISALLA: Right. And then of course, well, my parents [there were –JE] two things; one, was I went to school on student loans because there wasn't a lot of money. CYNTHIA CARR: Oh. JOY EPISALLA: And they were I think nervous at that point on what, you know, what would happen, blah—blah— blah, how would I make a living? CYNTHIA CARR: Yeah. Right. JOY EPISALLA: Not—I mean, quite supportive of me, I mean I did a lot of things. Like I did all the sets for all the plays and, you know, that kind of thing in high school— CYNTHIA CARR: In high school, right. JOY EPISALLA: I painted a huge mural in the Elmsford Main Bank, I painted a bunch of murals in the school, I was very—I made costumes. Besides the art teacher there was a great—oh boy, I'm going to forget everybody's name, what was his name, my drama—the drama teacher [Richard Goodwin –JE], it was like a drama club. He was gay and his sidekick was this English teacher [Susan Cannell –JE] and she was a lesbian. So they were probably the first two people on my radar also. CYNTHIA CARR: Right. JOY EPISALLA: And he was fabulous. He would take us to New York once a year to see something. And we also did pretty amazing plays in that school. It was in Elmsford. It was Alexander Hamilton High School and at that time I would say, probably more [black students –JE] than white. We are talking the '60s into the '70s. CYNTHIA CARR: Right. Yeah. JOY EPISALLA: It was very interesting, because there were actually—the school had a lot of black students, we were singled out because we were surrounded by a lot of white high schools—all-white high schools. CYNTHIA CARR: Oh, uh-huh [Affirmative]. JOY EPISALLA: So there was tension between our school and other schools because of that. So I learned at a very early age, probably in a pretty unfortunate way, about how awful people can be. Which was that in our school there were these white kids that didn't like black kids, and they were much older than me—I think I'm like oh— maybe 8th grade or so—9th. There was this boy, Michael, who I knew, who was a basketball player, and we had a great basketball team. Of course, we beat the shit out of all those white schools, you know. It was cool. [They laugh.] But—he got in—these kids confronted him in the play yard one night and they killed him— CYNTHIA CARR: Oh, wow. JOY EPISALLA: —they stabbed him. CYNTHIA CARR: And the ones who killed him were also students at your school? JOY EPISALLA: Yes. Of course they were found. But it was so tragic— CYNTHIA CARR: Wow. This is high school? JOY EPISALLA: This was high school, so it was huge. CYNTHIA CARR: So—yeah. JOY EPISALLA: I don't know if I can—I'm bad with names, I will try to find them for you.