Jessica Brown

Jessica Brown, Musician/Educator

Jessica holds an MID from the Rhode Island School of Design where she specialized in sustainable design. She is a designer, painter, furniture maker, finish carpenter and all around Renaissance woman who can work with just about any material that crosses her path including wood, metal, plastics, textiles, and clay. She currently focuses on projects to help renters and homeowners design and build projects around the house as well as teaches others how to greenovate their home. In addition to residential design, she has taken on small commercial projects and her own work has been showcased by HGTV’s Vern Yip, published in CritMagazine, and has work in a permanent collection in Milwaukee Art Museum. In early 2015, Jessica was a contestant on SPIKE TV's reality show, "Framework," television's first-ever furniture design competition series.

While still in college, she worked at a finished carpentry shop where her duties including loading large pieces of wood onto racks, fabricating, finishing, and installing kitchens into client homes. There she was the only female but quickly showed that she would be treated as an equal. At the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), she led a summer crew of workers to design, build, and install a storage system for the woodshop tool room and shelves for the faculty offices. Throughout her leadership roles, she has seen the value of clear communication, teamwork, respect, and good craftsmanship.

Recently, she taught Industrial Design at RISD and worked at a package and product designer for several companies in Rhode Island. Currently, she is the host/designer/producer of a nascent blog series called "Let’s Just Make That!", a DIY show that empowers regular people to become makers. As the host of "Let’s Just Make That!", she instructs people with simple step-by-step instructions, encourages the reuse of materials, and uses easily accessible tools to show viewers how to create the projects that they desire and make the repairs that they need. The range of materials and techniques demonstrated include woodworking, laser cutting, sewing, electrical work, spackling, and gardening.

Not only is she an artist and designer, but she is also a musician where she has performed in front of audiences of over 1000. While in graduate school, she had the honor of being the emcee at the first ever Better World By Design conference with its international audience of designers, architects, doctors, and professors. She was also nominated by her peers to give the graduation speech at her commencement, a highly honored and coveted position. She has proven time and again with her outgoing personality and quick wit that she is comfortable on stage and in front of a camera. While continuing to grow her blog, Jessica is doing freelance industrial design projects under JessicaBrownDesign.