When she’s not tending to teeth, multifaceted Minnesotan Dr. Jaime Preble tends to a patch of fertile, beautiful Gopher State land.

Would it be a stretch to say that Dr. Jaime Preble is a bit like Leonardo da Vinci? Well, maybe; few of us could easily withstand comparison to the Renaissance genius. Yet like da Vinci, Dr. Preble is a master of many pursuits combining science, art and nature.

         “Dentistry is considered the art of the sciences, and I love that,” she recently told Incisal Edge writer Shannon Bowen. “I often think of my handpiece as a sculpting tool, and each tooth as a tiny sculpture. It sounds cheesy, but patients seem to appreciate that touch.”

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Honored among the 2016 Incisal Edge 40 Under 40, Dr. Jaime Preble brings the beauty of Minnesota to a NYC photo session with the dental lifestyle magazine.

 

In the spring issue of Incisal Edge, Dr. Preble shared her story:

A farm girl from outside Pierz, Minnesota, Dr. Preble knew she’d want to raise a family in a rural area—where there’s “room to run,” she says. The two years she spent as a dental assistant spurred her to go to dental school, and she graduated from the University of Minnesota’s program in 2013.

Thereafter, rural she went: She now owns Pine River Dental Arts in the tiny eponymous town (population under 1,000) some 150 miles north of Minneapolis. Downtime finds her on her 15-acre “hobby farm” nearby—the designation refers to a small operation intended for fun and not a business venture. The land is worked each year by a neighbor, who grows crops to help feed his cows; the rest is covered in pine plantation and woods of oak and birch trees.

“I like to grow a small garden and pick the wild raspberries and blackberries abundant in the woods,” Dr. Preble says—endeavors in which she’s joined by her husband, Jason, and sons Easton, 5, and Emmot, 3. Camping, biking, four-wheeling, paddleboarding: If it amounts to being active in nature, the Prebles are doing it.

 

The farm isn’t her only extracurricular pursuit. She loves to put brush to canvas, something she’s been doing since her teenage years. Stylistically, she’s more van Gogh than da Vinci. “I’d love to watch him paint,” she says of the erratic Dutch master. “However, he was a little crazy—so maybe from afar.”

Overall, though, it’s the outdoors that speak to this proud Minnesotan the most profoundly.

“I love the solitude I find on our land,” she says. “There’s sometimes nothing better than the quiet found walking on our trails through the pines after a crazy week at work.” Who needs the Sistine Chapel when you’ve got a canopy of beautiful trees?