About me
Brigida Swanson is a queer, multiracial CHamoru watercolor artist from Seattle, and the one woman show behind her company, Yardia. Formally trained as an artist and educator, she creates watercolor-driven and Pacific Northwest-inspired art, stationery and home goods that help folks to express their intersectional identities and love the place they live.
Brigida first started designing cards at the age of six, drawing her family's annual Christmas cards. She started Yardia in 2008 alongside her 13-year career as a middle school art and leadership teacher, where she implemented art and design lessons as catalysts to teach leadership skills like communication, collaboration, reflection, and understanding personal strengths and stretches. In possibly the best and worst timing of her life, she left her teaching career to run Yardia full time at the end of the 2019 school year, just before the world shut down. Since then, Brigida has grown Yardia while remaining rooted in its five core values. Yardia values nature, creativity, belonging, community and harmony, inspired by the ancestral values of Brigida’s indigenous CHamoru heritage and the Pacific Northwest culture in which she was raised.