Bunnie Reiss was raised under the wide blue skies of Colorado and often describes her childhood as similar to the song ‘Little Fluffy Clouds’ by The Orb—What were the skies like when you were young? They went on forever. She grew up a tiny rebel with a large imagination and knew from a young age that she would build things much bigger than herself. Raised in a large Polish and Russian family, Bunnie’s inner and outer worlds were shaped by a familial love for food, loud talking, and deep community. These roots forever encourage and influence her creativity and work.
While living in Rural Colorado in the 90s, Bunnie studied literature, worked for NPR, and quietly painted on the side. Magic, mysticism, nature, and stars slowly crept into her consciousness and she began obsessively studying these interests and callings that permeate her work today. Driven by an ever-present need to travel, be in community, and obtain information, Bunnie has lived and worked in many places, including the San Francisco Bay Area, where she received an MFA from San Francisco Arts Institute, found a community of artists, and grew and thrived in years of creative incubation in wild streets full of weird art and people, painting everywhere she could.
After a short, but influential, stint in Pont-Aven, France and a few other areas around the United States, Bunnie relocated to Los Angeles where she began creating her murals and art all over the world. Her murals, and mural-making process, are always in conversation with the communities she works within. Bunnie is forever taking off her headphones to chat with people curious about her work and process. During the pandemic, Bunnie began creating more mosaic and sculpture work. Her intricate mosaics use traditional techniques to converse with objects, collections, and memories to create vibrant missives from the natural and supernatural worlds. Her sculptures are based on nostalgic playground toys made for adults, sparking conversation between serious and playful, fine art and low brow, and encouraging interaction and play.
Bunnie has shown extensively in both the United States and around the world, in galleries, alternative spaces, bookstores, abandoned buildings, fields and forests, or any place that seems to need a little extra magic. Her brightly-colored folk murals decorate many countries and can be found all over the world in places like Los Angeles, Mexico, Italy, Paris, India, Philippines, Detroit, Milwaukee, New York, and San Francisco.
In 2016, Bunnie purchased her dream property in the Mojave Desert of California and began slowly building up a 5-acre art farm affectionately known as Lilac Lane Farms where she has found a balance of life and art within her painting studio and alongside animals, vegetable and flower gardens, and community.
My work consistently reflects my Eastern European family background and my dedication to exploring nature and the cosmos. I often investigate the specifics of shifts in myself, my surroundings, and the world in general and these examinations can be seen realized in my colorful murals, immersive sculptures, large-scale mosaics, and paintings. My creative process is an embodied and communal one—I tap into friends and mentors, long walks and sitting for quiet desert sunsets, visiting with my animals and gardens, and maintaining a constant curiosity and desire to seek new information. While I use a variety of modalities, materials, and processes, the subject matter of each creation determines the materials and process, as does the community and place I am creating from and within. In my life and creative work I engage with alignment and letting things be as they are. I am constantly interested in fostering and seeking to engage the presence that comes from creating, from the often labor-intensive process of my larger-scale works and installations to the quiet solitude of painting in my desert home studio, to create work that is conversational, joyful, and very much alive.
