Jennifer Gentry/Entrepreneur Profile/Helen C
Profile: Jennifer Gentry
Sometimes career paths develop in unexpected ways. For Jennifer Gentry, a visual art major at Wake Forest 20 years ago, it was the need for an illustration of a fetal pig dissection.
Gentry explains that there was a comparative biology lab manual that did not include illustrations. After connecting with her Biology Lab TA, she was granted permission to work on illustrations of the fetal pig as well as illustrations of a bee. The fetal pig illustration shows what you find when you make your first incision into a pig. The illustration of the bee showed the bee’s pollen sac. While she did not get paid for these tasks, the Teachers Assistants used these illustrations in their lab manual.
“[In sculpture] I saw what I was capable of. I could make a project come together using pieces that I needed to orchestrate. I gained confidence in these art classes and this confidence eventually carried over into my science courses, but it took time”
Jennifer Gentry effectively combined her degrees in studio art and biology to better the Wake Forest community as well as understand her own interests. Today she is an award winning medical illustrator, an entrepreneur, and a studio art professor at Wake Forest University. She blazed her own trail and is a perfect archetype of a creative, logical thinker.
Entrepreneur Jennifer Gentry is considered as highly creative and thoughtful, and struggling to combine a degree in the arts and sciences while in undergrad she managed to create a career best geared for her many talents.
Wake Forest graduate and recipient of a degree in Art as Applied to Medicine, Gentry began her career designing prosthetic breasts for women who dealt with mastectomies and lumpectomies. She was hired to help transfer the design process where they were sculpting clay and plaster. She and a partner digitized the process as they scanned women’s bodies, torsos, and then would use software to create a form that matched a remaining match.
“Gentry did paintings of women’s braziers while in college, even trolls with braziers,” said Page Laughlin, her college painting professor. “I think it is interesting that she went on to work with women’s breast prostheses and working for companies that work with women’s intimate garments.”
Gentry worked for a couple of companies and believed she could handle many realms of her field such as 3D animation, directing art, medical illustration, but she realized this was too hard of a feat. She honed in on medical illustration and in 2005, after illustrating scientific discoveries, she created a portfolio and branded herself as ‘Gentry Visualization’.
She admits to feeling fearful in the beginning of this venture as she didn’t know how to gain clients, but knew this was something she could very well do and did not want to work for the company, Coloplast, any longer. She discovered she could get work by networking with peers from graduate school.
She has run her business successfully now for twelve years, developing it as a sole proprietor, rather than incorporating and expanding it. If someone requests a project for too low a price, she will not accept the project. Her hourly rate is $75 to $100. She can estimate how much time a certain task would take. She then asks if her clients want to own a copyright, want to be sold exclusive rights, etc. All of this is important, as she needs to figure out if she can resell her work or reuse a sketch. She maintains her assets, her work, by selling exclusive rights.
Gentry’s client and colleague, Brenda Bunch, said “Jennifer’s best work was created for ‘Reconstructive Surgery: Anatomy, Technique and Clinical applications’ by Michael Zenn and Glyn Jones.”
Bunch notes that Gentry is detail-oriented. While Gentry may not produce work as quickly as her competitors, Bunch says the quality of her work is always worth waiting for. Gentry agrees saying “If there is an error in my illustration, it is on me and that is part of the professional practice. I have to give myself enough time to make sure it is correct where as with art, your client it yourself.”
“I just think Jennifer is gifted in all areas” says Laughlin
Gentry’s business model is ever-changing. Her competitors are her colleagues in the field, but she says it is easy to network for job opportunities. There is a department in a hospital in Winston-Salem geared towards medical illustration, but she says she preferred working on her own over this. Her main connection to the Winston-Salem community has been through Wake Forest as she is a studio art professor. As a professor and medical illustrator, she admits that a lot of her supplies and techniques overlap which is helpful. .
Gentry admits that her goals aren’t profit based. “I am not the best business person. I know that. But I am a medical illustrator. That is what I do. That is who I am.” Gentry says she has to make a certain annual salary for the upkeep of her practice, but laughingly she admits that her intellectual curiosity falls in areas that do not help her increase profit which leads her to assume she may not be the best business person. Gentry wants to further her career by working on scientific discoveries that are cutting edge or that are in a really exciting place in scientific discovery. Similar to Laughlin, Bunch hopes that Jennifer is able to work on projects that interest her most. They think she will be happiest if she can expand her horizons, allowing more room for creative and intellectual experimentation in the field of medical illustration.
“Jennifer is independent, capable, and always does beautiful work” says Brenda Bunch
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