Telling Women's Lives

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

Unfinished Business’ Reader’s Response, Helen

Anne-Marie Slaughter expresses hope for workers and managers to decide, separately, and together, to create an environment that allows everyone to fit care and career together in ways that benefit both. In this discussion issues are raised such as gender wage gap, general problems with hearing women’s voices in the work force, policies on maternity leave/raising children and working, and the expanding social structure of work-family tension in the household. In my opinion, it is important to not only address these issues but to solve them quickly. There are numerous platforms that advocate for women’s rights in the work force, however, going directly to the source is tough. How do you convince a boss, coworker, or spouse that they should give women less time off during maternity leave, to fully listen to a female’s perspective during office hours, and to advocate for female’s being the breadwinner in the family. It is tough to change fixed opinions, but the more platforms (such as organizations, books, movies, etc.) that display these belief systems will hopefully increase this open discussion for cross-cultural intersection of women’s rights. Wake Forest WGS professor Wanda Balzano writes, “…change comes when you work towards it.” Slaughter writes, “it’s the workplace, not women, that has to change.” I found this to be interesting. I personally think that it takes both a women’s internal voice and the workforces voice in order to change, not just one. Women need to be more vocal and confident with their voices in their movement—although it is important to get a field of work to change. I think they are equally important in this movement.

Reader’s Response/Farmer Jane/Helen

I was highly impressed by the work of Emily Oakley. She made it her mission to bring healthy eating and sustainable living for the town of Tulsa, Oklahoma. She became well practiced in healthy eating habits and farming through education at the University of California Davis along with her learned experiences in Providence, Nebraska. She and her husband continually experimented with fruits and vegetables seeing which would grow in their soil along with observing growing methods. While maintaining these research methods, they built their own business model. Through marketing of word-of-mouth they inspired their town about the importance of healthy eating. Their mission became others’. It reminds that one person can make such a huge impact in a community! She truly is a woman of constancy. Not only did they pursue their own benefits in this field, but also they pursued other benefits for their community. They decided to only hire laborers if they could afford to pay them a living wage and she purchased and accepted food stamps for low-income folks to use so they can afford her produce. These two entrepreneurs are smart, caring, and invested in their work. She even admits to the gender issue in her community as she had to take on the seemingly obvious role women play in a business; she provided the jovial saleswomen at the market to increase profit whereas her husband had a straight forward approach to marketing. I didn’t like her explanation of men being better mechanics—I don’t fully agree with that. Nonetheless, her story is truly compelling. She reminds me how entrepreneurs must whole-heartedly expose themselves in order to achieve maximum success.

The Confidence Gap RR Helen C

The Confidence Gap Reader’s Response

I found the overall article to be fascinating, but there were a few parts that struck a chord. One of my biggest weaknesses is not speaking up as often as I should in fear that what I say will not sound perfect the first time I say it. There was a story in the article about how a female associate at a law firm was extremely well practiced, but did not speak up during client meetings. The senior partner had to include confidence as a part of a formal performance-review process, which hurt her. I am afraid of this for me. How do I practice this? Where do I go from here? Apparently there are groups called Toast Masters that help with Public Speaking—I would love to invest time in this!

I also liked the part that said that people who are confident have expansive body language, a lower vocal tone, and a tendency to speak early and often in a calm, relaxed manner. “They do a lot of things that make them look very confident in the eyes of others”. “Whether they are good or not is kind of irrelevant”. “The most confident people were just considered the most beloved in the group” … “Their overconfidence did not come across as narcissistic”. This struck a chord for me. I am in a sorority where the girls change their profile pictures on facebook every week and expect to have 100-300 likes per photograph. Is it strange to assume that this may fall under the notion of confident people try to do things to make them look very confident in the eyes of others—and especially in the eyes of others…Facebook is a direct portal for the eyes of their sample market, Wake Forest University…and the target market being…employers, family members, loved ones, etc.

Also, I loved that this article touched on perfectionism. I am working on this right now—I am fighting the need to be perfect in a world of women who need to be beautiful, whatever that may look like. I grew up in a society where women in the south (I grew up in South Carolina) provided for their man emotionally and cared for the children 24/7 unlike the man. As I wish to be a working mother, I cannot afford to look and act like a ‘step ford wife’ like the mothers I was surrounded by during every dinner party, etc. I had to stop playing sports in high school and I found the arts to be a place where I could be honest, weird, truthful, expressive…it has been a wonderful outlet to express my inner self.

Implicit Bias-Helen Cardamone

Three quotes stood out to me in The Effects of Gender Roles, Implicit Bias, and Stereotype Threat on the Lives of Women and Girls.

1. “Our brains automatically organize the stimuli we encounter, drawing on stereotypes when we lack full information or we need to make quick decisions”

2. “Popular culture plays an important part in reinforcing these gendered associations”

3. “Definitions of beauty have significant impacts upon women in many realms. Women who do not conform to beauty norms often experience a cascade of negative consequences, in large part due to strong cultural associations of beauty with capability and positive personality traits”

Implicit bias was brought up during the movie we watched at Dr. Rubino’s house and is brought up frequently in my art history courses. What we choose to show in all forms of media becomes a somewhat pictorial normality. In order to understand the reasoning behind a producer of imagery, you must research their upbringing, medical records, relationships with family and friends, etc. All the while, this information may help the viewer understand more about the producer, which is always important, but audiences will never fully understand what was going on through the mind of the artist/producer.

Courses like WGS and papers like “The Effects of Gender Roles, Implicit Bias, and Stereotype Threat on the Lives of Women and Girls” are important. In controversial essays about feminism, gender issues, racism…if no one will speak on behalf of how imagery is bias then our society will never curb our media’s lens. In my opinion, there is always room for open discussion and improvement.

Our society must take the time to acknowledge imagery and take a personal stand on how to present oneself and how others present themselves. If research shows that their is a positive correlation between what is internationality beautiful and what is societally ‘normal’… then slandering and supporting should always be appropriate, in good humor or with good taste. It should always be okay to disagree with someone; that goes without saying.

Media provides information for our entertainment, politics, etc. If our brains automatically organize stimuli we encounter’ then shouldn’t our snap decisions of beauty be called into question during times like now. In this WGS class. During dinner conversations.

Jennifer Gentry

I will write a profile on Jennifer Gentry. She studied at Wake Forest University and today she is an associate studio art professor at Wake Forest and operates her startup ‘Gentry Visualization’ designing medical illustrations.

Jessica Shortall, Helen C

Jessica Shortall started the idea for Wake Forest’s campus kitchen, graduated undergrad with degrees in Art History and History, served in the Peace Corps in Uzbekistan, received an MBA, and was the Director for Giving for TOMs. Today she is a speaker, writer, and strategist in the business world regarding social impact issues.

https://www.ted.com/speakers/jessica_shortall

WFU Student Leader Profile

I plan to interview Sarah Lewiecki, a junior with studies in studio art and philosophy. As a recognized painter at Wake Forest, Sarah has taken leadership roles in the studio such as being a Teacher’s Assistant. I have a friendship with Sarah as we have taken a painting course together. Sarah’s painting style is an inspiration to myself and to many studio artists; her care and attention to detail in the arts is an inspiration to myself. I hope to learn more about Sarah and how she became interested in the arts.