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Julia Bean ’05

Free-spirited and creative, Julia was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1982 to Maria and L. Chapman Bean. She grew up in Scottsdale, Arizona, and attended Xavier College Prep. At Reed, she majored in art. One of her favorite places was the photo studio in the art building, where she developed her black and white film, her creative style, and ultimately her thesis, Invisible Realities: An Approach to Psychological Portraiture with Prof. Ethan Jackson [art 2001-05].

One of her roommates at Reed, Kyndra Homuth Kennedy ’04, remembers, “Julia was there for me through some of the hardest, best, and most ridiculous moments of my life. She had a magnetism about her that made people want to be around her and do whatever she was doing. Her love of life and adventuresome spirit will live on in all of our hearts.”

Julia drove to campus in the 1967 VW Beetle she often used for road trips through the Pacific Northwest. She was an ace pool player, loved the pool hall and the yearly pool formals, and had some favorite picks on the legendary jukebox.

She had a special regard for the canyon, and regularly joined the canyon crew helping to clear clematis vines, plant new trees, and build trails.

One of her best friends, Rebecca Weisman ’04, remembers that after her freshman year Julia moved out of the Old Dorm Block and into the “Krakhouse” with her best friends. “They threw some of the wildest parties we ever experienced as Reedies.”

Julia was active at KRRC, at Renn Fayre, and welding bikes with C.H.U.N.K. 666.

After Reed, she earned a master’s degree from Scuola Politecnica di Design in Milan, Italy. With her husband, Mike Flynn, she founded a creative design and fabrication studio in Brooklyn called Outland Projects. In addition to her husband and parents, she is survived by her grandmother, Lee Bean, and her brother, Alex Bean ’04, who took the accompanying photo of her on top of her roof in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

Appeared in Reed magazine: March 2016

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