Rier empowers women with art

Art by Erika Rier. Photos by Nick Pelster.

MHCC’s Fireplace Gallery will exhibit “Inner Turmoil,” featuring various illustrations and drawings by artist Erika Rier, through Nov. 24.

Throughout the gallery inside the Student Union, the artwork explores a variety of topics, including women’s rights, politics, mythology, and daily life.

Rier, 38, is an illustrator who works with art mediums ranging from ink and watercolor togouache on paper. She created a style known as “Folk Surrealism.” Previously having worked with oil paint, she had “a chip on my shoulder that I needed to be an oil painter to be, you know, a ‘well-rounded’ artist,” she said. “Drawing was my passion but I avoided it. I did a lot of oil painting through my 20s.”

Rier claimed her style was inspired by “Indian and Persian miniatures, Victorian tales, fairy tale illustrations from the late-1800 and 1900s artwork,” and more. More inspiration came from looking through her stepfather’s sketchbooks and work by French painter Édouard Vuillard, which she found fascinating, questioning “How do people do this? How do they make paintings that look so realistic, especially Renaissance painters?” she said.

“I just remember looking through his art book and thinking ‘I want to become an artist when I’m older.’ ”

As for Rier’s artwork displayed at Mt. Hood, many pieces involved morphed animals and mostly women, since she’s an advocate for women’s rights.

She didn’t hesitate when asked about the significance of morphing those creatures together: “I feel like the ideas I want to show is different aspects of being a woman in modern-day, modern culture, but (also) feeling like just drawing a female herself doesn’t really get that across,” she said. “So, if I draw a woman who’s part bear, and part woman, you see that fierceness: the more aggressive and violent bear. Where if I drew a woman being aggressive, it wouldn’t carry the same kind of weight behind it.”

In high school, Rier took general art classes, spending most of her time in the art room if there were no classes going on, she said. To her, the art room was “a safe place” to be, a way to avoid being bullied elsewhere. She began attending college at Bard College at Simon’s Rock, in western Massachusetts, after her sophomore year in high school in 1993 to pursue writing, prior to attending Burlington College, through 1999.

Rier’s gallery exhibition is open to visitors from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Mondays through Thursdays, and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Fridays.

Advocate Staff