"RUMbunctious George" Painting

Elizabeth Criss is a Los Angeles–based artist whose work transforms everyday materials and overlooked spaces into imaginative, engaging experiences. A graduate of California State University, Northridge, with a B.A. in Art, she combines an optimistic use of color, inventive assemblage, and a commitment to environmental sustainability.

Repurposed materials play a central role in Criss’s work. Discarded plastics, medicine bottles, and other unexpected materials become elements of underwater worlds and dimensional installations that invite viewers to look again at what we throw away. Her work encourages reflection on plastic pollution and our relationship with the natural world, while emphasizing the creative possibilities of reuse.

Public art has been another enduring focus of her practice. Criss has created murals and dimensional installations for schools, public libraries, environmental facilities, and programs serving people with disabilities. Her involvement began when she enrolled her non-verbal daughter in a special education school and recognized an opportunity to make the school environment more welcoming and inspiring. Over the following decade, she transformed school corridors with colorful assemblage panoramas designed to encourage curiosity, self-expression, and a sense of possibility.

Her installation Message in a Bottle at the Wildling Museum in Solvang, California, created an imaginative underwater environment populated by unusual fish, kelp made from medicine bottles, and delicate jellyfish cut from plastic milk jugs. Through tactile details, unexpected materials, and playful imagery, Criss invites audiences to discover beauty in unlikely places and reconsider the potential of discarded objects.

Her public art and environmental installations have been featured in the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Daily News, and Noozhawk. Her projects have also received support through grants from the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, and the Los Angeles Board of Public Works. In 2006, she received the Ellison Exceptional Award for work involving special education communities.