I find the question of what I do for a living incredibly hard to answer. I know many people that can easily describe what they do: a doctor, a teacher, a professional baseball player. I can’t do that. I make things – good things, not-so-good things, things people want, things people don’t want, art, craft, form, function…

With this site I am trying to give a better idea of what I do. Yes, I make things, mostly out of metal, but that doesn’t cover the variety of things that I produce or the reasons I produce them. It also doesn’t convey how important it is (to me) that I master my craft.

In some ways I focus on process and in some ways on the end results. For me the process is meaningless without the final product partly because the process is more than just forming the materials. It’s also creating and combining the aesthetic and the use of every piece.

We engage in a lot of arguments (mostly semantic) about art or craft or form versus function or the meaning of a piece. I’m not trying to engage in that. I divide most of my work into two categories: the things that people pay for before I make them and the things that people pay for after I make them. The former are things that are conceived in someone else’s head and the latter are things I make from my own vision.

There is always an element of me in everything I make. My technique and my aesthetic are always present in my work and I hope, with this website, to share them with you.

Jennifer Gilbert

CURRENT IN THE STUDIO
New works and works in progress

FUNCTION OVER FORM
Furniture as expression

EARLY WORK
The work in the beginning

IN THE PUBLIC EYE
Public work and works in the public

CURRENT EXHIBITIONS
Where is the show