Jessica Goodyear died in Branford on Jan. 20 after a brief illness. The daughter of Dr. Stephen Goodyear and Mary Robins Goodyear, she was born in Carmel, California and spent her childhood in Darien, Connecticut. She graduated from Milton Academy, after which she studied at the American College in Paris.  She received her B.A. in Architecture from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in 1980.  Also in 1980, she attended the Wright Ingraham Institute in Colorado Springs, Colorado. She lived in Branford and New York City.

Jessica’s career centered on the arts. She won many awards, including the Cine Golden Eagle and Peabody Award, among others. In a series of drawings, she documented archeological sites visited during the course of her research for her manuscript, The Serpent that Shakes the Earth. Another series documented important landmark buildings in Lower Manhattan, shown in a solo exhibit at India House. One of the underlying themes of her work is the fusion of art and science. At her death, she was working on an installation entitled “Illustrious Ancestors” that traced her ancestry back to the founders of the American colonies including New Haven, the Mayflower, and to her English and Dutch forebearers going back 500 years. Her art was included in publications, including Site Matters: the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s World Trade Center Artists Residency, 1997-2001, and Visioning Life Systems: Artists’ Work from their Permacultural Source. Last year, her work was exhibited at the John Slade Ely House in New Haven.

Goodyear was a pioneer in the emerging field of cultural geology. She began using the phrase “cultural geology” in the early 1980’s to describe a new holistic anthropologic approach to the relationship between culture and tectonics. Jessica also had a lifelong interest in architecture, demonstrated in many films and in her drawings documenting landmark buildings in lower Manhattan. She delved into the topic of people undergoing stressful situations in “The Nature of Stress” (PBS 1989), “Rights of Passage,” (UNICEF 1994), “Faces of Hate” (Southern Poverty Law Center 1993), and “The Iran Hostage Crisis” (CBS cable 1998).  She was also an instructor at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.

Jessica leaves behind her sister Abigail and brother Talbot; two nieces and four nephews. Her brother Zachary predeceased her in November. A celebration of her life is being planned for the spring. Memorial donations made be made to the American Anthropological Association.