Iron Butterfly: A Wild Night Backstage With Dashenka Prochazka a.k.a. “Bunny Girl”

pic: Volcom

By Kristie Griffith

A lot of people went to Volcom’s Bruce Movie release party, in Costa Mesa, CA, for a lot of reasons. Some went for the free Red Bull/Vodkas. Some went to see The Bruce Movie. Some went for the music. Guys went to meet girls. Girls went to meet Guys.

My mission was to find a girl, and this was all I knew: Dashenka Prochazka was Ozzie Wright’s muse and girlfriend. She painted blood on herself when she performed with her band, The Goons of Doom, and she is an artist.

This was a Saturday night in August, and the Volcom warehouse was a place full of noise and packed with people. I got lucky and bumped into Volcom’s Steve Stratton who pointed me toward this gypsy woman. I approached cautiously: Would she give me attitude? Wax esoterically about art? Paint me with blood?

Past Dashenka’s bright blond hair with dark roots, the single, thumb-sized, red-blood-lipstick-circle in the middle of her lower lip, and torn up clothes, is a strikingly pretty woman. We got into it, and this wild-looking woman set me at ease right away. Rather than rant on pretentiously about art and music, she dove straight into the interesting stuff-where she came from, what she has been through, where she is at now.

Dashenka Prochazka was born on Halloween, 29 years ago in the former Czechoslovakia to anti-Communist parents in a Communist country. Her mother was a teacher who encouraged students to be free in their minds, and her father was a talented handball player who was allowed to travel out of the country to compete.

When Dashenka was four and a half, her vagabond life began when she fled with her family from Czechoslovakia and beyond the Iron Curtain. Like true gypsies, they slept in tents and lived in refugee camps, making several attempts to cross borders before making it to Switzerland.

Dashenka was shy, not “nerdy shy,” but “stare out of the window and draw” shy. At night she enjoyed the hardcore music scene in Lausanne, all the while dreaming of attending art school.

Instead of art, she followed her mother’s advice and earned a degree in Economics. Later she worked for a real estate company and made great money. When she was 23, she broke up with her boyfriend of five years and left Switzerland to travel.

From San Francisco she journeyed to Costa Rica, which changed her life. “I wasn’t my mom’s daughter, my sister’s naughty nasty, little sister, my boyfriend’s girlfriend.” She learned to surf, and that led to Hawaii, which led to New Zealand. Traveling with a couple of fellow vagabonds, they were passing Manu Bay in Raglan when she had the urge to jump out of the car. She was alone, it was dark, and there was no campground, but Dashenka says, “That’s the best decision I’ve ever made.”

One day Dashenka said “Good luck” to a passing surfer. She didn’t know him, and still doesn’t know why she said it. He stopped, curious as to why she had said that: “I was shy… He came closer and had stickers on his board… I was like, ‘Ah, you probably don’t even need it.” He said, ‘Ah, thanks. I think everyone needs luck,’ and then just took off.”

And that’s how Oscar Wright met Dashenka.

At coffee shops around Raglan they were too shy to speak to each other, but she says the chemistry was “just there, like magic.” Then Barney Barron invited Dashenka to see a band in Hamilton, an hour’s drive outside of Raglan, with the boys who included such surfing greats as Bruce Irons and Dean Morrison. Ozzie and Dashenka hit it off and back in Raglan, they passed a pub and she heard her favorite song, Nina’s 99 Luftballoons. She wanted to dance but was turned away because of her dirty sneakers. Oscar grabbed her and they danced on the sidewalk and kissed for the first time. Oscar took Dashenka on his surf trip bus around New Zealand with all the guys. From then on, their lives have been intertwined: a mix of separating and coming back together.

Oscar returned to Australia and Dashenka followed soon after. They clicked and she feels they were destined to meet. “We like to do art. We like to go surfing. We like to hang out. Kind of the same life, in thinking, and soul, and mind, we’re so connected.”

For a few years, Dashenka returned to her real estate job in Switzerland periodically and that financed her lifestyle, which was work, travel, Ozzie, work, Ozzie, work, travel. They met in various places around the world for two and a half years. They had never discussed marriage and then, two weeks before Christmas 2002, Oscar said, “Let’s get married on Christmas day.”

Theirs is a relationship to sigh for. She calls him, “my boyfriend, my lover, my husband, my inspiration. We’re not married by law, only by love.” She is his “Bunny Girl.” One day, years ago, she was wearing a hoodie with little ears. He sketched them and continued sketching until they were proper bunny ears.

Volcom sponsors The Goons of Doom, Ozzie’s surfing, and Dashenka as an artist and designer. The Goons come across as a dark band, but are actually pretty lighthearted.

Ozzie draws Bunny Girl and Bunny Girl draws “comic, kind of folk-art. It’s kind of childish, innocent, wacky.” She does get a little cryptic when discussing her creations.

“I always felt like I was from a different planet. That’s what my art is as well, it’s Planet Pluto.” Traveling also influences her, “you always meet new people, you are around new stuff, new cultures, I think that’s the most important thing,” she smiles.

And with that, she had to leave to go onstage as The Bruce Movie was ending. As they were getting ready, Dashenka made sure the band was painted with fake blood; and that we all had a drink in hand. She even painted a little blood on me….