Lisa Bonarrigo Bruni

Lisa Bonarrigo Bruni, born February 4, 1961, died on October 8, 2026 at her home in Portland, Maine, surrounded by the life and family she had built there.

Lisa grew up in Pembroke, Massachusetts, and Thomaston, Maine, before making Portland her home in the early 1980s. An artist from an early age, she studied ceramic arts at Alfred University in upstate New York and spent a year living and studying in Japan, experiences that deepened what would become a lifelong devotion to clay, craft and making things by hand.

That devotion eventually became Portland Pottery on Washington Avenue. Lisa began simply, teaching ceramics from her second-floor apartment in Portland. From those early classes grew a studio, school, gallery and supply business that became part of Portland’s creative community and one of the Northeast’s largest ceramic supply operations. Together with her husband, Chris Bruni, Lisa expanded Portland Pottery over nearly three decades, creating a place where generations of students, teachers, working artists and beginners could learn, work and find community.

Lisa’s imagination rarely stopped with one idea. Over the years, she also created or helped create Portland Pottery Café, Clay Farm and Lena’s Italian Comfort, bringing together many of the things she loved: art, food, teaching, hospitality and people gathered around a table. She also built and managed a thriving real estate portfolio, approaching property with the same instinct she brought to her other ventures: seeing possibility, creating value and making something useful out of what was there.

She met Chris Bruni at Bruni’s Market on Munjoy Hill, the neighborhood store owned by his family. From then on, the two were inseparable. They married in 1989 and built a life together in Portland, raising their family and building businesses side by side.

Family life was never confined to home. Lisa and Chris traveled extensively with their children, creating a childhood shaped by movement, curiosity and seeing the world together. The water was always part of Lisa’s life. She loved the ocean, spent years sailing the coast of Maine, and spent part of each summer at the family cottage in Harpswell. She chose to live close to the water, and in her final days looked out from her home and to see the ocean beyond her porch.

Lisa loved to grow things. Her gardens were filled with fruit, vegetables and flowers, and she found real pleasure in tending them and watching what came up each season. She also loved to cook, and she cooked often. Food, like art, was part of the way she cared for people and brought them together.

Lisa is survived by her husband, Chris Bruni; their children, Andrew, Abigail and Jordynn; and their granddaughter, Aurora. She is also survived by her mother, Barbara Whitney; her siblings; Laura, JJ, Joby, Angela, Andrew, Julia, and the large extended families on both the Bonarrigo and Bruni sides, including generations of nieces, nephews and cousins, as well as the many friends, students and members of the Portland community whose lives crossed hers.

Lisa was an artist, teacher, entrepreneur, restaurateur, real estate investor, gardener, cook, mother, sister, wife and friend. She could be generous, demanding, funny, opinionated and fiercely involved in the lives of the people she loved. She believed in making things, feeding people, teaching people, taking chances and expecting people to use what they had been given.

Near the end of her life, Lisa said she was “going on vacation.” It was very much in character. She imagined herself still being herself, just somewhere else, traveling to places she had not yet seen and reconnecting with the people she missed. That is how her family likes to think of her now: off on her next trip.

Visiting Hours will be held on Sunday, October 11 from 2- 4 pm. At the new Conroy-Tully Walker Funeral Homes 300 Allen Avenue, Portland.

In lieu of flowers, they ask you to make donations to Good Shepherd Food Bank of Maine or Adoptive & Foster Families of Maine (AFFM).