Heather Kilbourn

Art

Sculpture and woodworking commissions available!

From adding light and life to your home to a treasured heirloom piece to cherish or gift, I'll work with you to create the perfect piece that is design-forward. Please contact me on LinkedIn to discuss.

BIOME SCULPTURES

Blending my passions of tropical plant & fish keeping and woodworking, I design sculptures small and large, evocative of tropical biomes from around the world.

My first large-scale sculptural piece, Rain Chamber #1, is in final fabrication.

A watercolor and pencil illustration of an early Rain Chamber design. A photograph of the wooden frame for Rain Chamber #1. It is a vertial, cylndrical tower with an attached, curving bench. The tower has a large and small oblog-shaped cutout. The tower and bench is jatoba wood and the cutout is detailed with purplewood.

WOODWORKING

Wooden boxes, furniture, and cabinetry made with three generations of tools.

A photo of a small, handmade box with the top hinged open. It is made from jatoba and purplewood. A photo of a nightstand bookshelf made from oak and jatoba. There are three sections. The top section is open, the middle section has a drawer, and the bottom is also open.

I'm often asked where I learned woodworking and I always start with my grandfather, who had a shop with table saw, a big workbench, and a drill press powered by an old washing machine motor from the 1930s. Together, we made birdhouses and I watched him fix chairs and make the odd piece of furniture.

A photo of three wooden triangular boxes made from padauk wood, with oak highlights.

The junior high school I attended offered a variety of vocational classes, including woodworking. This is where I learned how to use a band saw, disc sander, and other tools. Before computer-assisted design (CAD) took over in the late 1980s/early 1990s, technical drawing and drafting were also taught, and the skills I learned there about isometric drawing and representing 3D objects on 2D paper has helped immeasurably over the years in my design sketches and plans.

A photo of three wooden triangular boxes made from padauk wood, with oak highlights. Two of them have oak lids with silver sticking out of the top.

In college, I worked for a variety of contractors and helped build and remodel houses. This rounded out my skill set with exposure to plumbing, electrical, and materials estimation.

People pass, but their tools remain. I have been fortunate to inherit family tools, and my grandfather's mix of hand and power tools included hand tools from my great-grandfather's collection. An uncle left me his mostly power tool collection, which I have augmented with my own purchases.

PAINTING

Explorations of color and texture.

A photo of an ancyrlic on canvas board painting. It has a black underlayer and a brushed gold overlayer that tilts form vertial about 20 degrees. The gold paint looks streaked with black in some places.
Dirty Gilded Age, acrylic on canvas board, 2025.