Clara Josephine Van De Grift Nielsen was born June 9th, 1896 in Riverside, California, the daughter of Jacob Van De Grift and Clara Jeannette Noland Van De Grift who had come to Riverside from Indianapolis in 1881. Jacob was involved in growing oranges, real estate development, and was postmaster/registrar of Riverside for a period in the mid to late 1880s. His sister, Frances (Fanny) married Robert Louis Stevenson and after RLS's death in 1894, invested in a building and orange grove in Riverside with her brother.
In 1907 an article about Jo, "A Riverside Protege in Art" appeared in a local magazine. It discussed her work under the tutelage of Sez Nicolini, a local artist, and included a still life of a bottle of chianti and three pieces of fruit. Jo-Jo, a good student, was valedictorian of her high school class. At UC Berkeley she majored in art, studying under Eugen Neuhaus and Perham Nahl, and in her senior year won a competition to illustrate the Senior Women's book.
There was then a pause in her work, until her daughter Jeannette entered Riverside Junior College. Jo decided to go with her and began studying water color with Rex Brandt and David Scott. By 1944 her work had progressed to the point that she had 2 watercolors accepted for the 15th Annual State-Wide Art Exhibition at Santa Cruz, one of which was awarded second prize in the watercolor division. Following this, she exhibited many times with the California Water Color Society, in San Diego, Santa Paula, Azusa, Laguna, the Orange Show in Pasadena and the Arizona State Fair.
In the 1950's she continued her studies at Scripps College under Millard Sheets and Phil Paradise, who recommended her as a student to Jean Ames at Claremont, under whom she studied design, mosaic and enamels between 1955 and 1959. The assistant curator of the Museum of Contemporary Crafts in New York City, Robert Laurer, saw some of her work in a Claremont exhibition and invited her to send her enamel "Still-life with Fruits" to the museum for a show entitled "Enamels" in 1959.
Jo's enamel work blossomed thereafter. She began doing larger format, multi-piece compositions, many of them focusing on pelicans, and wood tree structures with enamels of birds and citrus fruit. She also worked with her daughter Nancy in designing a large scale mosaic mural in Borrego Springs, California, depicting the history of the area.
She continued to work until her death on May 25, 1982 at the age of 86, returning to drawing and watercolor for painting junkets with Millard Sheets to Tahiti, Samoa and New Zealand (1973), Puerto Vallarta, Mexico (1975), Nazare, Portugal (1978), Ajijic, Mexico (1979); Robert E. Wood to Japan (1975); Dong Kingman to Manila, Bali, Singapore, and Hong Kong (1979), and Kailua Kona, Hawaii (1980 and 1982).
