Jessilyn Brinkerhoff

https://www.prairielinetrail.org/site/working-forward-weaving-anew-

Commission for the City of Tacoma's upcoming Prairie Line Trail. After four months of research and collaboration with historians and the Puyallup tribe of Tacoma, our team designed and installed this contemporary historical mural downtown on the back of 7Seas Brewing. The mural, entitled 'Working Forward, Weaving Anew', begins on the left with stories of the cedar tree from the perspective of the first people's in the Puyallup tribe. As the mural moves to the right, the history of cedar becomes a story of European commodities and production in the growing city of Tacoma.

Collaboration with EcoMurals.
Exterior Mural and Plasma Cut Steel.
275' x 55'.
Location: 7 Seas Brewery and Taproom
2101 Jefferson Ave, Tacoma, WA 98402

Steel fabricated by Lucas Brinkerhoff.
2017

Detail of painting the girl as she weaves the future together in camas, wheat and stories from Tacoma's past.

Detail of progress painting the portrait of a Puyallup woman of high regard as a basket weaver.

Detail of plasma cut steel abalone shell and basket section installed on mural. The great Puyallup grandmother weaver builds an open-weave clam basket filled with shells representing a successful harvest.

Detail of conifer forest, ravens and history of clearcutting. 
 

Detail of European wood carver working on a cedar door.

Commissioned for Eugene Public Library, this is a playable public art piece for musicians to enjoy downtown. The design I painted on the surface of this Spinet piano features native plants of indian paintbrush, maidenhair fern and lupine in vibrant colors. Abstracted book pages stand behind the plants in gold and blue, while accents of the original wood are throughout the piano.

This street painting was commissioned as the featured artwork for the 2016 Art Along the Rogue Festival. It features the renowned musician and activist Nina Simone for the festival’s 2016 theme of “Legends”. Nina Simone is an icon of American music and was know as The High Priestess of Soul.

Deeply affected by Mississippi bombings of the 60’s and the Civil Rights Movement taking place during her career, she began using her musical prowess to sing of injustice in her communities and nation. These protest songs were controversial to her jazz career yet her passion to tell the stories unheard through music was stronger than fame. This street painting is an homage to such a great woman whose MIGHT has inspired thousands of artists, activists and those who have heard her music.

This art style is called Madonnari after the tradition of Renaissance artists painting from the church to the streets on their hands and knees.

In 20 hours over 2 days my team and I completed my design for the street art festival, using chalk pastel in the lineage of traditional Madonnari street painters.

Successful Installation!

This reading tree sculpture collaboration between the talented Lucas Brinkerhoff and I will live in the Illinois Valley children’s library.

These steel pieces from the reading tree piece were a whole new world of creating designs to then cut them out with a plasma cutter and grinder. The final step was banging away at them with hammers in a vice to bring out their curvature. Missed paintbrushes for just a minute.

We like to think that whatever is read under the reading tree will never be forgotten.

Hand plasma cut and CNC plasma cut Steel and Copper
with Fir and Plywood

2017

View of the left wall

Installation Day in the library ceiling

Steel insects freshly cut and shaped

Take a closer look, do you see the bird windows within the wings?

The collection of characters to install in the library, patina copper and steel

Commission for City of Medford, in collaboration with Esteban Camacho Steffensen. Mural and Ceramic Installation located in Hawthorne Park Viaduct pillars under Interstate-5.

My team was commissioned to help revitalize this park's reputation from an unsafe and underused space into a vibrant welcoming public greenspace in downtown Medford. Today Hawthorne Park hosts music events, farmer's markets, dog parks and playgrounds.

Each of the six chosen pillars holding up I-5 were painted with the Rogue Valley's landscapes and natural history in mind. With twelve compositions total, each design features a native species in their habitat for a month of the year.

With the support of the Wildlife Images Center, we collected the stories and research of many characters including the Western pond turtle, blue heron, trout, salmon, rattlesnake, swallowtail butterfly, pollinators, insects, black bear and cougar.

As a native myself to Southern Oregon, this Wildlife Calendar Walk mural has been an experience of restoring reputation and relationship with the park as a vibrant space. It has also been a parallel experience of portraying species that we humans fear or don't connect with. Our hope is that these images can help create a new relationship of respect and curiosity with the black bear, cougar, rattlesnake and others with a historical reputation, while continuing to honor and revitalize populations such as the salmon and honeybee.

See more progress images of this project at instagram.com/jessilynbrinkerhoff.

Pollinators in a ceramic and painted swarm installed on pillar

Pollinators, pear blossoms

White Tailed Deer, Sword Fern, Oxalis

Documentation and footage from mural workshop I held at Palo Alto's office in downtown Eugene for their employee collaboration.

"The employees at Palo Alto Software participating in a collaborative mural painting project. We had a local artist, Jessilyn Brinkerhoff, design the mural and then lead us in several workshops to work together to put it on our wall. The mural reflects a lot of the things we care about:
- Where we work (Eugene, OR)
- Lean planning and development;
- The challenges that our customers (small business owners and entrepreneurs) face every day as they put in the hard work to succeed in business.
Business owners know that some days are easy and enjoyable, and other days make you question all of your choices. Inspired by our views of the Willamette Valley, the simple, clean, natural elements reflect our strategic approach to developing products with a focus on the essentials. Our process is iterative, as we continually seek improvement.
Peaks and Valleys also communicates upward momentum. Despite many challenges that business owners face, we are committed to helping people succeed in business throughout their journey."

Video Credit: Bplans.com

This painting serves as a future mural design, inspired by a January in Austin, Texas.

2' x 4'.

Learning the gastronomic history of the Willamette Valley Kalapuya natives, here is the grand camas flower. The primary staple plant from which they harvested bulbs and roasted to sweetness.

2' x 3'.

Botanical Mandala Mural in copper, blue, green and red to complement the space. Additional bedroom mandala in blue.

4' x 4'.

A chalk pastel street painting for the Art Along the Rogue Festival in Grants Pass, Oregon. This is an original piece for the theme this year, The Art in Music. Each artist is given an 8' by 8' space of asphalt to complete in two days. After the festival the street blockades are removed and traffic is permitted to drive over the artwork, leaving ghost images on the asphalt for months.

Feature art for City of Springfield, Oregon's Upstream Art storm drain project.

This street painting for brings awareness to the streams that city storm drains lead to, encouraging citizens not to dump into storm drains.

After researching storm drains and learning more about the untreated drain waters, I considered what species are affected by dumping down drains. I decided to sketch a composition featuring wildlife species found in our McKenzie and Willamette rivers. This design tells the story of the creatures in the rivers reminding us that our decisions have consequences and affect the greater ecosystem that we enjoy year round. This beautiful aquatic life of river dwellers include salmon, trout, tadpoles, salamander, western pond turtle, crawdad, otters in the background and river botanicals. The design shows the entire community of species surrounding the drain as if the rectangle drain dumped directly from the street into a river bottom drain, and the locals living there are curiously present to the city water that enters their home.

Traffic Paint. Springfield, OR. 2016, 2017.

A chalk pastel street painting for the Art Along the Rogue Festival in Grants Pass, Oregon. Each artist is given an 8' by 8' space of asphalt to complete in two days.

A chalk pastel street painting for ESAP Eugene Springfield Art Project in Springfield, Oregon. Each artist was given an 8' by 8' space of asphalt to complete in one day.
People's Choice Award.

Mural completed on concrete wall using iron rich red clay soil and other pigments from the site.

Here I’ve set aside the acrylics and latex using instead a paint palette of earthen materials found on this property in Southern Oregon: charcoal, clay soil and wood ash (shown in bottom photo). With the intention to get away from industrial materials for a moment, I’ve found inspiration in the possibility of rich shadows in charcoal, mid tones of red and highlights in the opacity of wood ash each mixed with water.