About Jo Tyler

I’m a queer writer and visual artist whose primary media are poetry and mosiacs, with some fiction and photography for good measure. I’m a retired Penn State professor and former Fortune 500 VP who believes in chronic re-invention that brings the best of the past forward and sheds everything else to make room for something new. Blank pages and blank walls are her favorite canvases for experimenting and exploring. She hopes that anyone who engages with her work will leave that experience changed by it, at least a little.

She lives with her wife Gail and her dog Moxie in Baltimore, Maryland where she also swims, cycles, kayaks, performs improv and strums her ukuleles. She hasn’t run anywhere since she completed the marathon at the Baltimore Running Festival in 2012, so it’s easy to catch up with her these days…

My Writing

Poetry is a sensualist gateway that opens into a landscape brimming
with inquiry and provocation. My intention is to provoke new ways
of feeling and thinking in those who encounter my work, either on
the page or when I’m at the mic. I hope to surprise my reader, to startle a little, to raise a question, tickle a memory and, in general, to inspire reflection.

My Visual Art

Mosaic art opens up the world of the broken to the possibilities of radical re-assemblage. It allows for more than a new way of seeing, it’s the literal creation of a new being. I’m interested in contrasts through layers and textures and colors, and especially in unexpected juxtaposition that, like my poetry, I hope will provoke something new in the heart or mind of the viewer.

Artist Statement

My artistic endeavors are grounded in a desire to make first sense, then meaning, out of my experience. I enter my work across a threshold of noticing perplexities and nuances that elevate us and those that, equally, threaten to extinguish our flame. My aim is to draw attention to the details we encounter (and create) in everyday life, in joy and sorrow, in ease and struggle, to find the complexity in the simple, and to locate the universal in the deeply specific. I try to be fearlessness in fixing my gaze, seeing the delightful, and striving not to turn away from what feels scary or taboo. I hope that my work opens new possibilities for others who encounter it – that it will incite curiosity, surprise, soothe with affirmation, inspire change, and sometimes just be a bit of fun. We know art makes a difference, and I believe that doing what I do makes me better at who I am becoming. I offer it to others in the hopes that there may be, at least, something to enjoy…