Catching Waves

If home is where the heart is, then JENN GOLD could arguably claim any number of the memorable ones she’s enjoyed thanks to her childhood in a military family and from her own time with the U.S. Army. For now, though, she and her fiancé, JAKE GODFREY, are happily situated in Surf City, where they run an online shop called Her Surf Shack and maintain Gold’s portfolio site dubbed Jenn Snaps.

“Both photography and surfing brought me this amazing community that I didn’t even know I was missing,” she says.  

Her Surf Shack, which recently went live, features Gold’s funkier poster art as well as surfing accessories designed to empower women and encourage them to pursue the sport. Jenn Snaps caters to fans of ocean photography and one-of-a-kind woodworking pieces. Gold enjoys working from home because it allows her the freedom to surf and to spend time with her dog, she says, and that flexibility will be key if she and Godfrey, a fellow woodworker, decide to take their shop mobile.  

In 2020, her father, a retired Marine, was diagnosed with stage 4 lymph node cancer, so she moved back to coastal North Carolina. Gold says that she and her mother would go out to watch sunrises and sunsets to decompress and take in the beauty of the area even while her father was still sick, and it was on those walks that she first noticed a small group of women that met out on the water like clockwork. While they soon became some of her favorite photography subjects, she eventually donned her dad’s wetsuit and grabbed his board to join them. Gold learned to surf better and how to shoot photographs while in the water, and now she enjoys regular meetups with her fellow lady loggers, rain or shine.

“It started as something to keep me grounded,” she says of her art business, adding that she didn’t intend to stay in the area after her father died. “But by the time everything played out, the people that surrounded me were just so supportive that I couldn’t imagine getting that same feeling of community somewhere else.”  

Her art wasn’t always quite as prevalent in her professional life; for years, she volunteered overseas with humanitarian organizations primarily focused on women’s health and education. Wanting to know more so she could make an even greater impact, she got into an accelerated nursing program with Johns Hopkins and became a nurse. After working in a medical intensive care unit with adults navigating serious cases, she transferred to a pediatric ICU.

“Children are so resilient,” she says. “It was really cool to see how they’d come in one day and be sick, but then the next day, they’d be in the playroom.”

From there, she had the opportunity to work with IST Research in Washington, D.C., where she helped facilitate programs in Afghanistan that use cell phones as means of education as well as communication. After watching her dad undergo treatment and then participate in clinical trials, she changed her career path again to pursue her artistic dreams. 

Now, she’s also training to be an oncology data specialist. That involves learning how to organize and maintain patient records for a team that provides researchers with data that will inform and help improve their cancer-related studies. When her apprenticeship at Savista ends, she plans to do this work full-time and continue to manage her artistic businesses on the side.  

Gold also participates with the local chapter of One More Wave, a surfing group for veterans. She initially found it while trying to help a friend connect with other vets. “We were looking into art therapy, horse therapy, and then we found surf therapy,” she says. One More Wave meets every third Saturday at the Surf City Ocean Pier, and interested surfers can also find updates via Instagram. “It’s really cool to see how much more traction it’s gotten just since the first time I went out with them,” Gold says. 

Jenn Snaps and Her Surf Shack originals can sometimes be spotted at festivals and trade shows; her first show of the 2025 season was at the Herb & Garden Fair at Poplar Grove, and Her Surf Shack is headed to the Virginia Beach Surf Art Expo Memorial Day weekend. Some of Gold’s art is also hanging at Duke University Hospital until April 15.

“Whenever I tell my story, I think it does always come back to my dad in some way,” Gold says. “I like to look at whatever I’m doing and what I’m learning as a legitimate gift from him and develop it from there.”  

To view more of Katelynn Watkins’s work, go to k-watkins.com/bylines. 

To view more of photographer Daria Amato’s work, go to dariaphoto.com

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