Artist’s Bio
Jo Ford began painting at age three, and won an award through the San Francisco Chronicle for a piece entitled “Snake in the Fireplace”. A photograph of her painting was published in the Chronicle and she received a lifetime Storybook Key to the San Francisco Zoo.
After graduating from the San Francisco Art Institute, where she studied painting with Robert Colescott, Deborah Oropallo and Irene Pijoan, Ford worked as the Art Department Manager at the Bay Area Discovery Museum; additionally Ford collaborated with Artists and Musicians such as Richard Kamler and Jon Tchicai to create events for the 'SFAI Salon Series’ and worked with other artists from the SFAI Artists’ Committee to award the Adeline Kent Award and co-curate various shows at both SFAI and other spaces in the Bay Area. A few years after having her first child in 1997 Ford went on to get her MFA in Painting from UC Berkeley where she studied with Squeak Carnwath, John McNamara, Katherine Sherwood, and Mary Lovelace O’Neal, amongst others.
Ford taught art for many years at both public and private schools, predominantly working with teens in “underserved” areas of the East Bay. Jo had a second child in 2005 and in 2008 resumed working in public high school until 2017, when she took time off to spend with her family, and particularly her eldest son, who passed away in early 2021.
In 2025 Jo and her husband, Blaise Smith, started L7 Gallery in Washington State, a predominantly online gallery, (with live shows occasionally). L7 Gallery uses notable jurors to grant awards and prizes for their shows, which feature a wide variety of international artists.
Ford’s work has won awards from such jurors as Sandow Birk, Renny Pritikin and Enrique Chagoya, as well as from the California State Fair and the Korean Cultural Center in Los Angeles. She continues to paint and draw (pretty much) daily.
“As Jo Ford’s artistry expands, so does the cast of characters, animal and human, their props, the architecture of their environment and the stories they must tell us. As the manifold map to her subconsciousness opens, so does our own sense of wonder and curiosity.” – Jonas Thaler