Jo-Anne Green

Jo-Anne (“Jo”) Green, beloved sister, aunt, cherished friend, accomplished artist, and compassionate human being passed away on January 17, 2025 surrounded by loving longtime friends. She had been living with metastatic breast cancer for over seven years. 

Born and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa, Jo excelled as a young athlete, swimming competitively, captaining her school hockey team and playing tennis. She emigrated to the United States in 1983. A lifelong advocate for justice, she volunteered with the Fund for a Free South Africa from 1985 to 1992 and co-founded Cultural Resistance to raise awareness in the U.S. about Apartheid. 

 Her life was a tapestry of creativity, activism, and community. She lived and worked in Jerusalem, New York City, Albuquerque and Boston. 

 In 1999, she played a pivotal role in launching the Artist-in-Residence Program at the University of New Mexico’s High Performance Computing Center, which led to the founding of the Art Technology Center (ATC). She was Grants Administrator and, later, Program Coordinator for both the ATC and the Arts of the Americas Institute. 

Jo’s work spanned painting, printmaking, artist's books, and installations. Her art was exhibited in Johannesburg as well as in Boston and New York City. She was a prolific artist, celebrated by her peers, and her work is held in the Jack Ginsberg Centre for Book Arts, Wits Art Museum, Johannesburg, South Africa along with numerous private collections worldwide. Her work expressed themes of the inhumanity of apartheid, the suffering brought by war and torture, her love of nature and the realities of climate change, and her physical pain. As her disease became advanced, her art focused on the subject of death and the “mystery, abstraction and irreversible loss” of black holes. 

 Beyond her own creations, she was a curator, designer, writer, and educator. Her essay “Parsing Truths” was commissioned for Michael Takeo Magruder: (Re)mediation_s: 2000-2010; and her co-authored chapter “Mixed Realities” was published in Unsitely Aesthetics, edited by Maria Miranda. In 2013, she contributed an essay, “Generative Systems: (Re)Producing Hands and Faces,” to Sonia Landy Sheridan's Art at the Dawning of the Electronic Era: Generative Systems. 

 Jo served as Co-Director of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. (NRPA) from 2002 until its end in 2017. Founded in 1981 to foster the development of new and experimental work for radio and sound arts, NRPA was first renowned for creating New American Radio, commissioned radio works that were conceived and broadcast for over a decade on the Public Radio Network. 

 NRPA later founded Turbulence.org, which commissioned artists to create "Art exclusively for the Internet" that anyone could view and explore. Turbulence was one of the first online Internet sites that created real-time, multi-location experimental performance events from all over the world. Along with her life partner, composer and writer Helen “Teedy” Thorington, Jo was renowned for her leadership, expertise in computer art, and dedication to the artists she and Helen commissioned. 

 Jo held degrees from the University of the Witwatersrand (BFA Honors), UMASS Dartmouth (MFA), and Lesley University (MS). She taught at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Emerson College, and the University of Massachusetts. 

  Jo is survived by two brothers, Paul and his son Jarryd and daughter Candice; and Marc, his wife Natalie and daughter Kearin; and two sisters, Lisa; and Terri, her children Rodrick and Joshua; and sister-in-law Salome. 

 For over 20 years, Jo and Helen called the Woodbourne section of Jamaica Plain home, where they were deeply loved and cared for by their “Village”–Lizi Brown, Marjorie Charney, Nan Frane, Kristine Grimes, Robyn Ochs, Peg Preble, and Deb Whitman–and other dear friends. 

More on Jo’s life and work can be found at her website and on Wikipedia. 

 May Jo’s memory inspire all who knew her to live with creativity and purpose. Donations to Jo’s cherished memory can be made to Life Forest, 1087 Elm Street, 4th Floor, Suite 414, Manchester, NH 03101, or directly on their website at www.thelifeforest.com, or to Dana-Farber Cancer Institute P.O. Box 849168, Boston, MA 02284 or via www.dana-farber.org/gift. 

The Cremation Society of New Hampshire has been entrusted with arrangements. To view an online tribute, leave a message of condolence or for more information please visit www.csnh.com