Honoring Nature through Art: A Member Impact Story

ILFI is proudly featuring a series of member impact stories to showcase and celebrate some of the wonderful work our community has been doing. This week we introduce Jessilyn Brinkerhoff, visual artist and muralist whose work has appeared on the walls of schools, city government buildings, businesses, freeways, and more.

Jessilyn Brinkerhoff has always had a close connection with nature. She grew up near the wild and scenic Rogue River Trail in remote southern Oregon, cultivating an appreciation for native species and natural landscapes, and her passion for the environment has characterized her work as an artist. Her main focus is mural design and installation, and her commissions range from large building faces for new developments to small feature walls in individual homes. Though she occasionally uses printed pieces and vinyl graphics, the majority of her murals are completely hand-painted. All her work celebrates the natural world and uses bright, vibrant depictions to explore the relationship between humans and the environment.

Jessilyn’s favorite project so far has been the three-part installation she created for the PAE Living Building engineering office in Portland. She was asked to design a set of large feature walls, each to be located on a different floor of the five-story building. The three walls would have different themes – a blue alpine scene, a green forest scene, and a red ocean scene. From there, she spent several months conducting intense field research, traveling throughout Oregon creating sketches and consulting with local biologists about keystone plant and animal species crucial to the three ecosystems. After crafting and presenting her designs, she spent about a month on site with a small team completing the murals.

Photos Credit: ZGF Architects and Jessilyn Brinkerhoff

It was while working on the Portland Living Building piece that Jessilyn was first introduced to the Institute’s work and the larger world of green building standards. She remembers becoming part of the project team’s community during the weeks spent installing the piece, and having inspiring conversations about sustainable architecture. “It fascinated me,” she says, “the way that you can design a building to last over 500 years, be very selective about materials and have this very rigorous certification process.” 

Jessilyn decided to become more involved and become a Living Future Member, using what she learned about the certifications to inform her choices about what manufacturers to use for her murals. Early on in her involvement with the Institute, she learned about the Red List, materials prevalent in the building industry that are known to pose serious health risks to humans and our ecosystem. She recalled developing respiratory issues from over 15 years of working with industrial paint materials, and now shares her knowledge of Red List materials with other painters and muralists. Although sometimes, Red List-free paint products can be difficult to find, she believes it is important for the safety of everyone involved in the process, from those manufacturing paints to the people who inhabit spaces with them. 

Another crucial way Jessilyn’s work interacts with sustainable design standards is, of course, its aesthetic impact. Public art is part of LBC’s Beauty Petal for a reason: art like Jessilyn’s inspires delight and a celebration of place and culture. The murals can also serve as educational tools, engaging people with the subject matter and implicitly communicating the values of the institution behind the building or structure. To use Jessilyn’s own words, “art can be the soul of a space”. Her murals influenced the PAE Building’s Beauty Petal and are featured in the Institute’s latest Ecotone book release, the PAE Living Building: Developer-led, Nature-Inspired. See more of her work with architects, businesses and communities at jbrinkerhoff.com.