#eric rieger

After being tasered several times for spray painting the city, Hottea decided to go to a more passive-aggressive method: yarn.

He began creating images as well as words, and weaving on nail-studded light poles too. One day he made a picture of his grandmother using yarn to connect carefully placed nails, a bit like joining the dots. He said as the sun began to set he realized it wasn’t going to work, but all was not lost. “Just from the right angle, all the shadows from the nails, sort of cast the image of my grandmother,” he recalled. “It was really really interesting to see.”

Colorful Installations by Hot Tea

RELAX

HOTTEA

U.S.: STREET ART: HOTTEA

HOTTEA is an ongoing art project by street artist Eric Rieger, created to emphasize the connection to our surroundings. He says, "The project is a comment on all relationships good and bad and the things that lie between them. Like the phrase itself Hot and Tea are two totally different words brought together to represent something new, which reflect on the media and surfaces that the project makes use of."

After spending 14 years as a traditional graffiti artist, Rieger quit creating for the sake of his family: "For about two years I didn't do any sort of street art and I started to feel the void in my life. I began to think of materials I was familiar with and was taken back to my childhood. At a very early age my grandmother Socorro taught me how to knit and sew designs. My family is very important to me and I thought this would be a good way to keep my grandmother's memory alive." Although 'yarnbombing' started to trend in the street art world, Rieger was unaware of the movement, allowing him to create his own niche.

The Rituals piece above, installed in Williamsburg, NYC signifies Eric's desire to evoke an abnormal response during a normal part of one's day. He explains, "Thousands of people cross that bridge on a daily basis but no one is looking up...I wanted to create an experience you wouldn't forget and to bring pure happiness to people who viewed it...People were truly amazed at what they were looking at and unlike most of NYC people slowed down to take in the experience. This reaction and response to my installations is what gives me the motivation to continue creating work.

HOTTEA's Rituals