It was at the Chelsea Hotel that Jeni Olin and I met in 1997 over pills and beers with Anselm Berrigan, Simon Pettet and…I can’t remember exactly. Several years later she was living there with Larry Rivers. We sort of stayed in touch via Cedar over the years. She’s the author of A Valentine for Frank O’Hara and still lives in New York.
The first piece of Jo Jackson’s that I ever saw was this fantastic pastel silhouette of a couple fucking in front of a map of America, I think (or maybe it was in front of a skull). After another show she had at Quotidian Gallery in SF about a year later I asked her for some drawings for this book and she was nice enough to stick with it as the project almost fell apart a couple of times. Jo was recently featured in the Bay Area Now show at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco where she lives.