Eric Rieger, or his street name “HOTTEA,” is a Minneapolis, Minnesota-based graffiti yarn artist who uses colorful yarn to make interesting and non-destructive street art.

Rieger started out as a graffiti writer who spray painted his work before he ran into a cop during one of his graffiti ventures and the cop used a taser gun on him. As Rieger describes the encounter:

“The story goes I got tasered like four or five times. […] I went to jail and seeing my family going through all that pain, and just knowing that if this happened again they’d be going through the same amount of pain again, and I just couldn’t do that, and so I stopped doing graffiti art.”

Eric Rieger (2011) – Interview by Euan Kerr with MPR News

After that experience, Rieger decided to focus on getting his graphic design degree from Minneapolis College of Art and Design before graduating in 2007. Rieger became a freelancer for a bit before he started missing the excitement and enjoyment he got when he made graffiti. Within the same year, Rieger’s grandmother passed away and although they had a language barrier between them with him speaking English and her Spanish, the two often bonded and communicated through knitting. It is from this that he decided to combine the knitting skills he learned from his grandmother in a transformative, non-destructive way to create his graffiti writing again.

“I thought with my love of typography, how can I involve typography and yarn with street art? […] And then hence came about the fencework.”

Eric Rieger (2011) – Interview by Euan Kerr with MPR News

This is when he started making his yarn art on fences and most often would be the words “HOT TEA” which is where it developed into his street name and became a part of his identity.

The reason for HOT TEA, as explained in Reiger’s Vimeo bio section, is meant to show how the two words as interconnected and have a relationship with one another to present themselves as new combined meaning that wouldn’t exist if the two were separated. One word cannot exist without the other or else they both lose their combined meaning.

As best phrased in the Vimeo bio: “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 [HOT TEA] project makes use of.”

Rieger’s work as a graffiti yarn artist exploded as his work was seen all over Minneapolis. From there, Reiger’s work evolved beyond the streets and began having installation showings inside buildings and being hired by businesses to create work for them. Even though his work can now be enjoyed indoors, he still enjoys and creates his street work outside to be viewed by all who pass by.