Sienna bought a motorcycle. Looked at her helmet. Decided it wasn’t good enough. And picked up a brush.
That moment — a new rider, an unacceptable helmet, a decision to fix it herself — is the entire origin story of Sienna Originals. Not a marketing angle. Not a calculated brand pivot. Just a woman who looked at something and thought: I can do better than this.
Sienna Originals’ COI
Artist Profile: Sienna Fanizza is a Custom Artist from @Sienna.Originals
Most custom artists reach for an airbrush. Sienna didn’t. She paints the way painters have always painted with a brush, by hand, one stroke at a time and the result is something that doesn’t look like custom helmet art. It looks like a painting. Because that’s exactly what it is.
Koi —
The Ed Hardy Connection
For the Flying Piston Benefit ART-on-DECK auction presented by Gnarly Magazine, Sienna is painting a realistic koi fish — drawing direct inspiration from the iconic Ed Hardy koi designs that became one of the defining images of American tattoo art.
The koi is not accidental. In Japanese symbolism it represents perseverance, transformation, the ability to swim upstream against the current. In moto culture, those aren’t abstract ideas. They’re the actual experience of being a woman on two wheels — or anyone who decided to ride when the conventional wisdom said to drive.
Painted by brush. One piece. Going to auction at the Buffalo Chip on August 9.
The Brush That Started Everything
There’s a baseline assumption in custom moto art that the tool is an airbrush. That atomized paint, that gradient blend, that signature spray-fade look — it’s become the visual language of the genre. Sienna Fanizza started from a completely different premise.
She came from a traditional fine art background. Canvas. Brush. Deliberate, patient, mark-by-mark painting. When she turned that approach toward helmets and tanks, something unexpected happened: the work looked like gallery art, not like custom paint. People noticed. They kept asking where it came from.
“I paint everything by hand with a paint brush as if it were on a traditional canvas you’d see in a gallery.”
The subjects she’s drawn to — cars, motorcycles, animals — aren’t random. They’re the things with “delicious details to sink my teeth into.” Complex surfaces. Layered texture. Things that reward a slow, close look. The same qualities that make a great painting make a great helmet.
The Ride That Changed the Work
Some of her favorite memories as a kid happened on the back of her father’s motorcycle. That early, specific kind of riding — passenger seat, wind, the world rushing past at a scale you can’t get any other way — stays with a person. It stayed with Sienna.
She rides now. A Harley Pan America. And she didn’t just take it around the block. She rode it across the country to Maine and back — with her father. The same person who first put her on a motorcycle. That trip became source material. She pulled references from it and built a helmet design that went on to win a custom painting contest.
This is how Sienna works: life goes into the art. The ride generates the image. The image lands on a helmet that someone else then takes on their own ride. The loop is complete.
She rides with The Litas — the international all-women’s motorcycle community built on the idea that riding shouldn’t be a boys-only world. “I’ve seen how powerful that support can be,” she says. The motorcycle community, at its best, does that. It shows up for people.
“Some of my favorite moments as a kid were spent on the back of my dad’s motorcycle. I rode my Harley Pan America across the country to Maine and back — with my dad.”
About The Flying Piston: The Flying Piston Benefit is produced by Marilyn Stemp of Iron Trader News & Jeff Najar of Horsepower Marketing. Funds are raised to train kindergartners on how to ride bikes by donating balance bikes to P.E. kindergartner classes. We’ve assisted in training over 200,000 kids across the USA. We also focus on VETS. To help out and to join the team, click here.
