Jean Kondo Weigl. Photo by Kelly Pontoni
Jean Kondo Weigl is a third-generation Japanese American artist who works in painting and drawing. She was born in Berkeley, California, a few years after her parents’ release from one of ten internment camps for persons of Japanese descent that were mandated by the US government during World War II. Weigl attended public schools in Berkeley and Oakland, participating seriously in competitive figure skating at the regional level throughout her middle school and high school years. She obtained a BA from Scripps College, Claremont, CA; an MA from Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH, and an MFA from the University of Utah, Salt Lake City. Weigl’s work has been widely exhibited at regional and national venues such as the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Arkansas Arts Center, the AIR Gallery, NYC, and Gallery K, Washington, DC, and her one person shows include those at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Visual and Performing Arts Complex, Columbus, OH; the Zygote Gallery, Cleveland, and the Richard D. Baron Gallery, Oberlin College. An Archived Artist in the Artists Archive of the Western Reserve, Cleveland, Weigl has received grants from the Yaddo Foundation, the Ohio Arts Council and the Zygote Gallery and Press, and her experience includes teaching positions at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA; Oberlin College and Lorain County Community College, Elyria, OH. The artist has a son and daughter and two grandchildren and lives with her husband, poet Bruce Weigl, in Oberlin where she teaches classes for adults at the Firelands Association for the Visual Arts.