Julie-Ann's (aka: J-Bird) passions for art and surfing started at a very young age. When J-Bird was a child, her mom did not give her coloring books, but gave her blank sheets of paper with pencils, crayons, paints and was told to create from her imagination. She would create art for hours and was completely content. She is originally from New England and grew up 5 minutes away from the ocean in Hampton, NH (13 miles of coast). In 2010, she relocated with her husband, Jacob, to San Francisco, CA and lives a block from the ocean. J-Bird went to Northeastern University in Boston, MA and earned a degree in Graphic Design. After she graduated, she worked at different interactive agencies as a web designer. Eventually, she decided to pursue full time design consulting and also created a small clothing company, BirdSwell (www.BirdSwell.com) in 2009. Her designs are a combination of art, design and surfing. Her goal is to create unique, simple yet fresh surf designs using abstracted organic elements of surfing and the ocean. She includes a bird in all her design because it represents her, a bird’s free spirit, and because birds are part of the surfing and ocean experience.
Julie-Ann Burkhart
