ABOUT

Julianna Bernado is a Seattle-based artist, teaching artist, and environmental justice advocate whose practice bridges ecological science, social justice, and community-centered art-making. Born in Maryland, Julianna grew up alongside the Chesapeake Bay, where a deep love for the natural world and a drive to protect it took root early.

Julianna's academic path in Environmental Bioengineering combined with studies in Gender, Globalization, and Empire has shaped a practice that refuses to separate ecological crises from its political and social context. They do not view humans as apart from nature, but as a malleable part of the ecosystem, and their work insists that the fight for environmental health is inseparable from the fight for racial, gender, and economic justice.

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As a teaching artist with Seattle Public Schools and artist with Urban Artworks, Julianna designs and delivers STEAM curricula that invite youth and communities to see themselves as agents of environmental change. Their classroom is the intersection of science and creativity, a place where sun prints, natural pigments, and ecological observation become tools for understanding power, access, and the living world.

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Julianna's fine art practice, spanning oil pastels, watercolor, acrylic, and oil paint, draws on Fauvist color and bold mark-making to render the complexity of ecosystems and the urgency of environmental justice. Currently completing a Certification in Natural Science Illustration, they continue to deepen their commitment to making the natural world legible, beautiful, and impossible to look away from.