Erin M. Riley
Erin M. Riley
Workspace Program Resident 2019
As a weaver, I am perpetually challenged and humbled by my medium. During my Workspace Residency at Dieu Donné, I was continuously learning and adapting to such a unique process. Paper is unlike any process that I had previously explored, it behaved and transformed in ways I could not have imagined.
I came into the residency poised to delve deeper into work about death and loss, about an event that would forever change one’s life. I worked with the pigmented linen paper pulp atop sketches and tracings of car crashes and landscapes. In the beginning I worked in many ways, experimenting with the pulp but developed a process of working from the top layer of the image to the back layer of the image. This work involved a sketch, like the ones that I use in tapestry as a cartoon, which helps with composition and scale, and succumbing to the pulp as I do with my yarn on the loom. There was a lot of loss, of detail, of control, which is also familiar to tapestry, the content of the imagery is also full of loss, death, innocence. This process was one that was adapted in the studio with much help and mentoring from Amy Jacobs, who allowed me to explore with the ability to lean on her for support and questions.
The work made is exploring trauma, loss, the body and history. The interesting thing about working with paper pulp and working with tapestry is that crying on either does not affect the final result. I am an emotional worker and this body of work was arriving at a time when secrets were revealing themselves and I was vulnerable and introspective. This residency was exponentially transformative, and I am so proud of the work I made.
—Erin M. Riley, 2019
Erin M. Riley’s work uses striking imagery of car crashes and roadside memorials to relate the remnants of their aftermath to feelings of loss. Their work illustrates how chaotic yet understated skid marks across a highway can indicate life changing turning points and how makeshift memorials with homely crosses and flowers symbolize the immense despair that follows death in a palatable way. At Dieu Donné, Riley used pulp painting to create landscape images of car crash scenes. Riley’s work is primarily made with hand-dyed wool in hand-woven tapestries. They first started weaving the car crashes as an investigation of trauma and incident, but soon started thinking about the wrecked bodies of the cars themselves. This series considers the judgmental perceptions with which car crashes are viewed and asks why all bodies devastated by trauma do not receive similar consideration.
In the Studio
About the Artist
Erin M. Riley (b. 1985, Cape Cod, MA) received her MFA from the Tyler School of Art in 2009 and her BFA from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2007. She has had solo exhibitions worldwide at P.P.O.W. Gallery (NY), Never Apart (Canada), Hashimoto Contemporary (CA), Brilliant Champions (NY), Joshua Liner Gallery (NY), Guerrero Gallery (CA), Extension Gallery (MA), and Fleisher Art Memorial (PA), among others. She has been awarded residency programs at Dieu Donné, Yaddo (NY), Museum of Art and Design (NY), Bemis Center for Contemporary Art (NE), Vermont Studio Center (VT), and the MacDowell Colony (NH). She currently lives and works in New York and is represented by PPOW Gallery.
For more information, please visit their website: https://erinmriley.com