Jo Stealey

Pat met Jo for the first time in 2010 as she was launching the first collaboration.  Jo was professor and mentor to Erin Cork Woolfolk when Erin was in undergrad school at Mizzou.  Here is Jo at one of our monthly meetings for the 2011 collaboration  which ALWAYS included food.

You can find her gorgeous website here.

This year, due to her incredibly demanding schedule at the University of Missouri in Columbia, MO, a trip to Cuba, and moving house and home this summer, Jo will not actively participate in new collaborations, but she will be exhibiting some of the recent work that she has continued to do since 2011 using materials she had left over from the artist swap we had for the first collaboration.  She lives and breathes fibers--she is an internationally known basket weaver, book artists, paper maker and has been teaching and serving as head of fibers at University of Missouri Columbia since 1992.

Here Jo is showing us the piece that eventually became a book/scroll exhibited in the first collaboration.  The finished piece incorporated some of my rusted silk, and some devore work from Laura Strand.

The finished scroll as it was displayed at Jacoby Arts Center during Collaboration: Reaping and Sewing in 2011.  That's Pat showing the scroll to a friend at the opening reception of Collaboration: Reaping and Sewing.  

Earth to Heaven. 2011. Linen, rust dyed silk organdy (courtesy Pat Vivod), devoré cloth (courtesy Laura Strand), processed leaves, thread, vintage doily, digitally printed cloth, waxed linen thread, antique yoke. 11"x15".

Josephine Stealey, Napkin Study II Screen

This beautiful piece is a recent collaboration piece that Jo completed using silk that she acquired in the 2011 trade.  The piece is constructed of Jo's signature processed leaves, linen napkin, and silk.