Bird Studio’s artistry is everywhere. The Four Seasons, The American Academy of Music, Comcast, and not just in Philly. So how come you’ve never heard of it?

Maybe because Bird Studio is hidden away in a maze of factories in East Falls, rather than maintaining a glitzy showroom at the Design Center. Or because, prior to 2018, the studio was a pop-up, renting temporary space until it found a permanent home at 2800 Roberts Avenue. More to the point, Bird Studio’s founder Zachary Bird is too busy orchestrating a tsunami of projects to take credit for his many accomplishments. His work often goes unsigned.

Bird, 55, credits his career choice to genetics. “I’m a fourth generation artist,” he said. “My dad, Bill Bird, was a graphic designer. So was my mother. My grandfather, William Bird, was one of Philly’s leading scratch board illustrators. My great grandfather was an artist as well.” Bird also lays claim to a French-American great great uncle, Victor Nehlig, (1830-1909) who inserted himself into the historical painting, Pocahontas Saving John Smith (1870).

However, genetics alone will not open doors. So Bird, like generations of aspiring artists, enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts (PAFA). “It was clear to me and my parents by the end of my second year that PAFA was not in any practical way preparing students for commercial success,” he said. “Tuition was high, and I needed an income.” His situation is one that all art students face whether they complete their degree or not. Unless they major in architecture, graphic design, or education, the majority of fine arts grads work in fields unrelated to their major. In retrospect, Bird caught on to something decades ago that PAFA only recently realized. In January 2024, PAFA announced that it was eliminating its degree programs due to “rising costs” and “dwindling enrollment,” ultimately closing in August 2025. The University of the Arts folded last May.

Zach Bird creating gilded signage for Friday, Saturday, Sunday restaurant. | Photo courtesy of Bird Studio

Bird was lucky. He discovered that his skills were in demand. A friend told him that The Palm Restaurant was looking for artists to paint faces on the walls of their restaurants in Philadelphia and elsewhere. It wasn’t the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, but it was a paying gig. “The caricatures were a ‘Who’s Who’ in politics, business, and the arts,” Bird said. He continued working with the Palm Management Corporation for 20 years.

“Back in the mid 1990s, Palm Restaurant was expanding,” said Bird. “I felt the historic brand was diminished by the newness of their sites and suggested that they would be far more interesting if they reflected the grungy feel of their original NYC restaurants. Management agreed, so I began experimenting with aging and scenic techniques.” The result helped catapult The Palm into an international franchise. It also expanded Bird’s expertise and client base.

While many of his peers viewed computers as the antithesis of art, Bird was an early adapter. In 1992, as an art director in advertising studios in Atlanta, he embraced the latest photo editing technology: Adobe Photoshop. “I found it could be implemented as a powerful digital art rendering tool,” he said. “I was invited by Adobe, with other design professionals, to assist their tech team in developing rendering capabilities of the Photoshop platform.”

When 9/11 happened there was global market uncertainty, and many businesses pulled back, including The Palm. “They stopped ordering murals. But catastrophe equals opportunity,” said Bird. “I started doing conservation work for them. I was hired to perform delicate cleaning and conservation of 100 year-old original cartoon illustrations that adorned the walls of the Palm on Manhattan’s Upper East side.” Once again, Bird’s ability to continually adapt his skills to new materials and processes allowed him to expand his creative services.

Jacintha Kruc, a conservator at Bird Studio, works on a mural.  | Photo courtesy of Bird Studio

Bird worked closely with conservation experts from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the University of Delaware’s Art Conservation Department to complete the project. During the process he discovered that his knowledge of art materials and techniques applied to this new kind of work in exciting ways.

“Zach Bird is incredibly talented,” said Marie Bender, a local painter whose career path mirrors Bird’s. After graduating with a degree in fine arts from Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Bender worked as a calligrapher, sign painter, decorative plasterer, muralist, and substitute teacher. Whatever it took to pay off student loans and keep a roof over her head until she was able to focus entirely on painting. “I understand why Zach does all these things and does them all so well,” Bender said. “He loves to work with his hands.”

This is Bird’s comfort zone: constantly upgrading his skills and taking on new challenges. When Provenance, a new restaurant in Society Hill, presented a design by Stokes Architecture that involved a space entirely made up of curved edges, Bird Studio was able to create a system of overlapping insulation that resulted in a seamless smooth plaster space in the restaurant that lowered the noise level.

“Everything we do is site and client specific,” said Bird. That includes murals at Suraya, faux marble columns at the Bellevue, and 24 carat gold vintage signage in the window of Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

Zachary Bird and Nicolo Gentile discuss a work in progress. | Photo courtesy of Bird Studio

If you walk into Bird Studio, a no-frills space that could pass for a shipping container, you might find a conservator from PAFA perched on a scaffold meticulously painting a 19-by-40-foot mural. “We trowel a layer of plaster on the muslin first, then paint the mural on the plaster. That makes it easy to make changes later, just by using sand paper,” said Bird. The technique creates the appearance of a faded relic that was excavated from an archaeological site.

Which is what restaurateur Stephen Starr wanted for his new Italian restaurant, Borromini. “I found a Pompeii fresco in an art book and worked with New York architectural designer Ian McFeely of Paisley Design on a mural that would work well in the space,” said Bird.

Bird doesn’t work alone. “It’s a team effort,” said Mari Elaine Lamp, Bird’s studio manager who holds a 2017 MFA degree from PAFA. Nicolo Gentile, the studio’s
project manager, has an MFA in sculpture from Tyler School of Art and Architecture and is an internationally exhibited artist. Ultimately, the side gig that Bird embarked upon 30 years ago to pay off art school debt has grown into a full service design business that has generated employment for many other Philly artists over the years.