Recast Creative Studios

Reclaimed.
RECAST.
Reimagined.

Art that transforms material, memory, and meaning through texture, color, and reflection.

Studio One
Renderings
Original paintings, fine-art prints, and bespoke commissions.
Studio Two
Restoration
Painted mirrors on reclaimed wood. Objects given a second life.
Studio Three
Resale
Curated vintage and found objects. Coming soon.
Why I Create

"I want them to want to touch it — because the texture and color are so vibrant and saturated and full and real that you simply can't help but want to touch it."

Reclaimed.
RECAST.
Reimagined.

But always beautiful. Because the good is beautiful… and so is the bad, sometimes.

Read the full manifesto
Recast Creative Studios

Renderings

Five collections spanning installation, silhouette, cityscape, color study, and portraiture. Original paintings, limited editions, and fine-art prints.

Harlem Sweeties
Nocturne Neighborhoods
Signal Fires
Colors of Time
Pieces of Me
Collection One
Harlem
Sweeties

Nearly thirty years ago, Erica Richey Cook heard Maya Angelou recite a poem that stayed with her long after she left the room. She didn't know its name — only that it celebrated the beauty and spectrum of Black women in a way she had never heard before. For decades, she searched and couldn't find it again.

In 2026, she asked AI to help her find it. Within seconds, it returned Langston Hughes' "Harlem Sweeties." She read it, and she cried. Not because it was new, but because it had been living in her all along.

This collection is her visual response to that moment — nineteen paintings holding the women Langston saw on those Harlem streets: golden, warm, luminous, and entirely their own.

Harlem Sweeties — Full Installation

Harlem Sweeties — 10-Panel Installation · Mixed media on canvas · 2026

The Installation Panels

Panel 1
Installation
Panel 01
Available · Inquire
Panel 2
Installation
Panel 02
Available · Inquire
Panel 3
Installation
Panel 03
Available · Inquire
Panel 4
Installation
Panel 04
Available · Inquire
Panel 5
Installation
Panel 05
Available · Inquire
Panel 6
Installation
Panel 06
Available · Inquire
Panel 7
Installation
Panel 07
Available · Inquire
Panel 8
Installation
Panel 08
Available · Inquire
Panel 9
Installation
Panel 09
Available · Inquire
Panel 10
Installation
Panel 10
Available · Inquire
Acquire the Installation
Available as a complete 10-panel work or individual panels.
Inquire

Individual Silhouettes

Harlem Sweeties
Apollo
Original + Prints Available
Harlem Sweeties
Cotton Club
Original + Prints Available
Harlem Sweeties
Lennox Lounge
Original + Prints Available
Harlem Sweeties
125th Street Station
Original + Prints Available
Harlem Sweeties
147th Street
Original + Prints Available
Harlem Sweeties
Church
Original + Prints Available
Harlem Sweeties
Brownstone Park
Original + Prints Available
Harlem Sweeties
Purple City
Original + Prints Available
Harlem Sweeties
Cosmic Cityscape
Original + Prints Available
Collection Two
Nocturne
Neighborhoods

Cities hold memory differently at night. The buildings don't disappear — they absorb. Light pools in windows and on water. The skyline becomes a silhouette of everything that happened there.

Nocturne Neighborhoods is a collection of urban landscapes painted from emotional memory rather than photographic reference. Chicago at dusk. Mountains at the edge of a red sky. The horizon where a city ends and something else begins.

These are not postcards. They are feelings with zip codes.

Nocturne Neighborhoods
Chicago I
Inquire for pricing
Nocturne Neighborhoods
Chicago II
Inquire for pricing
Nocturne Neighborhoods
Red Sky Mountain
4-panel installation · Inquire
Collection Three
Signal
Fires

Some works don't begin with a plan. They begin with a feeling that needs to get out — anger, tenderness, longing, recognition. Signal Fires is the collection where that urgency lives.

Figures in motion. Symbolic forms. Emotional architecture. These pieces use color and texture to say what words approach but rarely reach. They are signals sent outward, hoping something answers.

Across the collection, the recurring question is: what does it look like to be fully seen?

Signal Fires
Anger and Love
Inquire for pricing
Signal Fires
The Embrace I
Inquire for pricing
Signal Fires
Frequencies
Inquire for pricing
Signal Fires
Night Signals
Inquire for pricing
Collection Four
Colors
of Time

These paintings are an ode to color, texture, and the way light transforms a surface. Each piece in the series occupies a single color field — but it is never simply one color. Embedded mirror tiles catch what is near: daylight in the morning, lamplight at night, the person standing in front of it.

The landscape of each piece changes with the hour and the viewer. What you see at noon is not what you see at dusk. This collection does not hang on a wall and wait — it participates.

Ten original mixed-media works. Available individually or as curated color sets.

Colors of Time
Amber Field
Original · Prints available
Colors of Time
Emerald
Original · Prints available
Colors of Time
Lapis
Original · Prints available
Colors of Time
Rose
Original · Prints available
Colors of Time
Crimson
Original · Prints available
Colors of Time
Verdigris
Original · Prints available
Colors of Time
Gold
Original · Prints available
Colors of Time
Burgundy
Original · Prints available
Curated Color Sets
Interior designers: acquire 2–3 pieces as a coordinated color palette.
Inquire
Detail
Colors of Time — detail

Each panel embeds mirror tile throughout the textured surface — the reflection shifts with available light, making every viewing a different experience.

Collection Five
Pieces
of Me

Not every painting belongs to a series. Some works arrive from a moment rather than a movement — a feeling that needed to become something, a subject that wouldn't let go, a direction the brush took before the mind caught up.

Pieces of Me is the collection that holds those works. Portraits, figures, abstractions, and personal landscapes. They share no single theme except the most essential one: they came directly from the artist herself.

These are the paintings that are hardest to let go of, and that is precisely why they are here.

Pieces of Me
Pieces of Me
Inquire for pricing
Pieces of Me
Self Reflection
Inquire for pricing
Pieces of Me
Crossroads
Inquire for pricing
Recast Creative Studios

Restoration

Painted mirrors on reclaimed wood. Each piece is a collaboration between salvaged material and original paint — objects given their fullest expression.

The Process

Material as Medium

These works begin not with a blank canvas but with reclaimed wood — boards that already carry history in their grain, their age, their imperfections. Mirrors are set into the surface, then painted over in the stained glass aesthetic that defines this series.

The result is an object that is both painting and sculpture — something you live with, not just look at. The reflective surfaces shift with the room, the light, and the viewer.

Commission a Restoration Piece
Restoration detail
Restoration
Stained Light I
Reclaimed wood + mirror · Inquire
Restoration
Stained Light II
Reclaimed wood + mirror · Inquire
Restoration
Stained Light III
Reclaimed wood + mirror · Inquire
Recast Creative Studios

Available Works

Originals and limited editions ready for acquisition. All works ship insured. Inquire for originals — prints available for immediate purchase.

Harlem Sweeties
Apollo
Original · Prints from $250
Inquire
Harlem Sweeties
Cotton Club
Original · Prints from $250
Inquire
Harlem Sweeties
Lennox Lounge
Original · Prints from $250
Inquire
Pieces of Me
Pieces of Me
Inquire for pricing
Inquire
Colors of Time
Amber Field
Original · Prints available
Inquire
Colors of Time
Lapis
Original · Prints available
Inquire
Nocturne Neighborhoods
Chicago I
Inquire for pricing
Inquire
Signal Fires
Anger and Love
Inquire for pricing
Inquire
Restoration
Stained Light I
Reclaimed wood + mirror · Inquire
Inquire
Fine-Art Editions

Prints & Editions

Archival pigment prints on heavyweight cotton rag. Every print is signed and comes with a certificate of authenticity. Limited editions never reprint once the edition closes.

Open Edition
$75 – $150
  • Archival pigment print
  • Multiple size options
  • Signed by the artist
  • Ships in protective tube
  • Certificate of authenticity
Order a Print
Limited Edition
$250 – $600
  • Edition of 10–50 (varies by piece)
  • Hand-numbered by the artist
  • Signed certificate of authenticity
  • Archival cotton rag paper
  • Edition closes permanently when sold out
Reserve an Edition
Commission Print
Inquire
  • Custom size to your wall
  • Gallery-wrap canvas option
  • Framing consultation available
  • Artist approval on every output
  • Ideal for large residential or commercial spaces
Start a Conversation

Most Requested

Harlem Sweeties
Apollo
From $250
Harlem Sweeties
Cotton Club
From $250
Harlem Sweeties
Lennox Lounge
From $250
Colors of Time
Amber Field
From $75
Colors of Time
Lapis
From $75
Colors of Time
Verdigris
From $75
About the Artist

Erica Richey Cook

Erica Richey Cook
The Artist

Erica Richey Cook is a painter, systems translator, and creative force based in South Texas. Her work spans five collections and three studios — original paintings, painted mirrors on reclaimed wood, and curated objects — all unified by a single act: taking something raw, forgotten, or unfinished and giving it its fullest expression.

Trained in history and education, Erica brings an archivist's eye to her canvases. She sees in patterns. She works in layers. She is drawn to the tension between beauty and darkness, between what endures and what is transformed.

Her flagship collection, Harlem Sweeties, was born from a thirty-year search for a poem she heard Maya Angelou recite and could not find again — until 2026, when AI returned it to her. That reunion became nineteen paintings about memory, color, identity, and the consequences of silence.

"That people became more than they thought they could because Erica believed in them first. That organizations grew without losing their humanity. That discarded things — whether furniture, buildings, or people — were given their fullest expression."
View Collections
Commission a Work

Artist Statement

I paint from the place where memory becomes material. My work begins with a feeling — not a concept — and the painting becomes the process of understanding what that feeling is trying to say.

Color is not decorative in my work. It is structural. Each palette decision carries emotional weight: amber and obsidian for the things that endure, deep teal for the things that flow, crimson for the things that burn. The figures in my paintings are not portraits of specific people — they are portraits of states of being. The silhouettes in Harlem Sweeties hold the presence of Black women without reducing them to a single face or feature. They are plural. They are expansive. They contain multitudes.

Texture matters because touch matters. I want the eye to feel the surface before the hand reaches it. Mixed media — mirrors, glass, reclaimed material, glitter, gold — enters my work not as decoration but as truth-telling. A mirror embedded in paint shows you something different every time you look. That is the work. That is the point.

My collections are ongoing conversations. Harlem Sweeties began with a poem and a thirty-year search. Colors of Time began with a question about what a painting looks like at noon versus midnight. Signal Fires began with the need to say something that had no other language. Nocturne Neighborhoods began with the feeling of cities at night — the way light pools and memory accumulates in places we pass through and never forget.

I am a developer by strength and a builder by nature. I believe in people and in materials equally. Everything I make is about transformation — the beautiful, difficult, necessary work of becoming.

Why I Create

I want them to want to touch it — because the texture and color are so vibrant and saturated and full and real that you simply can't help but want to touch it.

I have a visceral adoration of color and texture, reflection through mirrors, and the ability to see oneself, but also to see others.

Reclaimed.
RECAST.
Reimagined.

I want them to feel that. I want them to find beauty in it. Or find it clever. Or dark, somehow — maybe even sinister at times.

But always beautiful. Because the good is beautiful… and so is the bad, sometimes.

— Erica Richey Cook

The Process

Inside the Studio

Every finished piece began somewhere — a sketch, a color test, a panel mid-glaze, a mirror being pressed into wet paint. Process documentation is available for collectors who want to understand the full arc of a work's creation.

Colors of Time — detail
Harlem Sweeties — installation view
Harlem Sweeties — in situ
Colors of Time — Emerald
Restoration — Stained Light detail
Harlem Sweeties — Apollo

Process photography available on request. Collectors are welcome to inquire about in-progress documentation for commissioned works.

Recast Creative Studios

Commission
a Work

Erica accepts a limited number of commissions each year. Every commissioned work is built around your space, your story, and the emotional register you want the piece to hold.

Commissions are available across all studios — original paintings, painted mirror installations on reclaimed wood, and multi-panel works for residential or commercial spaces.

Starting Prices
Single Canvas
Inquire
Multi-Panel
Inquire
Restoration Object
$1,000+
Installation
$5,000+
1
Tell me about the spaceSize, light, intended use — residential, commercial, or gallery. The space shapes everything.
2
The conversationA brief exchange about palette, mood, narrative direction, and any personal significance the work should carry.
3
Proposal and depositA scope, timeline, and deposit to begin. You receive progress updates throughout the process.
4
DeliveryInsured shipping or local delivery. Installation support available for large works.
Begin an inquiry
Response within 48 hours.