Artist. He was born in Salem (Arkansas) and died in New York. In 1964, he made his first New York solo exhibition, at the Alan Gallery. Subsequently he showed regularly at the Landau-Alan and Fischbach galleries, and took part in many group shows around the country and abroad, including those at the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, Yale University Museum, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art. His theater work included set designs for Frank O’Hara’s The General Returns from One Place to Another and LeRoi Jones’s The Baptism, as well as sets and costumes for the Louis Falco Dance Troupe and the Joffrey Ballet Company. He also designed the covers of a great number of poetry books and magazines. He created many covers for books and record albums by his companion Kenward Elsmlie. Joe’s drawings, collages, assemblages, and paintings are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum, the Whitney Museum, the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Yale University Art Museum, and the Joe Brainard Archive at the University of California, San Diego. Cause of death: AIDS. (bio by: José L Bernabé Tronchoni)