Profiles 11.4 - Jen Jennings

Jen Jennings

Written by Grace Talice Lee Maker/Creator

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Jen Jennings comes from a household of artists who never fully pursued their passions: a ceramicist grandmother turned nurse, a seamstress mother turned homemaker, and a musician father turned telecommunications employee. It seemed like Jen would continue that tradition when she began studying microbiology in college. But then she switched to accounting when she couldn’t stand the microscopes anymore, and then changed again to fashion design when she grew bored with crunching numbers at a desk. She yearned to put her creative vision and nimble hands to use. She kept wanting more. So she made the leap into studio art and eventually graduated with a master’s degree in spatial design from San Jose State University.

Nowadays, she’s the in-house artist at Terra Amico, where she makes velvet pillows and giant clothespins out of wood and facilitates workshops on anything from linoleum printmaking to macramé tying to pinwheel folding. Recently, she’s taken a deep dive into the new medium of reclaimed fire hoses, turning the rubber lining and polyester yarns into dog toys, fly swatters, and birdhouses—each product handmade, handsome, and built to last.

“All the trial and error, the experimenting, just takes a lot of time. And I love it. I love trying to figure things out; I just love to have a challenge. That’s why the more things you know—that’s kind of bad because all the challenges are gone. Because you just want to learn something else.”