Each one of Erika Rier’s ceramic creatures has its own story, and most of them are at least a little unsettling. There’s the vampiric little girl with several sets of eyes, and the crowned and horned woman clenching what appears to be a not-very-alive bunny—something menacing is lurking within all of them. But what Rier didn’t anticipate when she first began sculpting these colorful friends years ago was the new lives they’d take on once they left her studio.

“People can accumulate these, and then they can make stories that I’ve never even thought of by just putting them together,” she says. “That appeals to the storyteller part of me. I feel like I’m always trying to put things in there, little archetypal bits that people can pull to make stories for themselves with.”

Rier’s characters

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