Jo Weiss was born in San Francisco into a family of a painter- during the return to figurative painting- by a group of artists known as the Bay Area Figure Painters. As a result, she has always been surrounded by the visual energy provided by the mark, an abstraction, and the subject, the figure—an ongoing conundrum for her. Even after moving from California to Wisconsin as a child, art and looking at art was a constant. Though she considers herself very kinetic, Jo would ultimately find the expression through visual gesture vs. physical.  

Jo received her MFA at American University in 1986. She has been a faculty member at American University, Georgetown University, and Maryland College of Art and Design. She was the Artistic Director and Dean of Faculty at the Washington Studio School from 2009-2019. She currently is on the Board of Trustees at the Vermont Studio Center.

Jo has had multiple exhibitions around the United States, including the Katzen Museum of Art (2019) in Washington, D.C.