Village Squire, 1976-09, Page 6Io herself doesn't turn out many new works
in a \ ear . perhaps a dozen at most. She gets
bogged down in too many other things, she
sa\ s. She makes about 75 copies of each print
how ever.
The good thine about being a printmaker,
she says, is that fou don't have to live close to
the big city markets. From her farm she can
send her: prints to all the galleries that now
sell her works from Edmonton to Quebec City
(such as the Thielsen Gallery in London.). •
In many ways, she says, living in the
country can give an artist encouragement
because people react t� her work and let her
know. She's even had people recognize her
name while she was paying for something
with her credit card, and comment on how
much they liked her work.
"It's nice to get reaction to what you do and
you tend not to get this in the cities," she
says.
Jo has a small, town background. Born in
Sydney, British Columbia, she grew up in
Amherstberg, Ontario, near Windsor. She's
always drawn since she can remember and
was encouraged by her. father, although he
never went so far as to expose her to art at a
gallery even though there was a very good
one just across the river in Detroit.
There wasn't much support at school where
teachers didn't encourage her interest. She
never had the opportunities that even rural
children have today to study art in school.
Still, she decided that art was her thing, at a
time when women just weren't accepted in art
the best. She went to the Ontario College of
Art at age 17. Soon after she graduated,
however, she did what most young women of
the time did: got married and had kids. Four
of them.
Although she tried to remain involved in
art, the family pressures meant she was more
or Tess isolated from the art scene.
As soon as the youngest of the children
went to school, however, so did she. She
returned to the O.C.A. where she took a
course in print making and etching. Then in
1960 she set up a studio and started
producing work. It took several years to build
up a tiny income. "Now", she says, "I make
about as little as ... I can't think of anybody
who earns as little as me. Even garbage men
are relatively well paid."
Still, she says, she wouldn't complain
because she's doing what she wants to do.
In addition to produo.ig work, she also
teaches art and has taught in community
programs, at Centennial College, at Sheridan
college, at the Three Schools in Toronto, the
Dundas Valley School of Art and the Elliot
Lake Summer School. She's also been • an
instructor in printmaking at the Fine Art
Department of the University of Toronto.
Her style was developed from back in
college days when she had a drawing teacher
John Alfson who was a pretty good teacher of
drawing but who tended toward the old
masters' technique and she took much of the
same interest. She's fascinated, she says with
form and meaning. It is evidenced in many of
her works such as a recent series of drawings
she was commissioned to produce for the new
Mass Book of the Catholic Church of Canada.
Jo was one of a number of Canadian artists
commissioned by J ane Beecroft of the
Canadian Catholic Conference to produce
The ink must be applied to the plate, then the
excess wiped off.
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