Erica Larsen-Dockray was born and raised on a 5,000 head feedlot her father Dallas built from the ground up 15 miles north of Scottsbluff, NE. Erica always had an interest in the arts whether it be painting, drawing, dancing, music or singing. Her interest in animation and time based media started when she was in grade school and was largely due to the off-chance opportunity to see MTV music videos her oldest brother Matt recorded at a friend's house. Seeing the atypical animation and graphics in these videos inspired her deeply.

Erica attended school in Mitchell, NE and continued to pursue the arts in every way she could including video production, visual arts, marching, concert, and jazz band, theater, speech and one acts. Erica also worked for her brother Matt at his business, Inventive Media where she often would "bug" her various co-workers creating video, web, and graphic design about their work and education. When it came time to apply for college, Erica petitioned her parents to head to art school in California. However a deal was made to study graphic design at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln for 2 years and at that point come back to discuss a transfer to an out-of-state art program.

In Lincoln, Erica studied graphic design under Ron Bartels ( an alumni of CalArts ) and was involved in her sorority, Delta Delta Delta. After two years in Lincoln she went back to her parents to talk about art school in California. As a compromise, Erica went to Phoenix, AZ to study animation and media arts where she received a BA with honors in the fall of 2003. Prior to graduating, Erica interned at Rainbow Studios, a CG animation studio and worked at Fuel Studios as a production assistant and motion graphics artist.

In late January 2004, Erica's father Dallas unexpectedly passed away and shortly after she moved back to Scottsbluff where she taught art at Haig school, one of the few remaining country schools in the area at the time.  In 2005 she founded her own freelance studio, eekart, under which she produced animation, video, graphic design, and visual arts for clients. It was her time in Scottsbluff where Erica re-connected with her love to teach and work with young people as well as her art practice.
 
In 2006 she decided to return to Lincoln to develop a body of work to apply for a Masters in Fine Art with the trajectory to become a college professor in media arts. In Lincoln, Erica worked as an Associate Interactive Media Developer for the University Communications Department. Through UNL Communications she received a research assistantship to pursue an MFA at Lincoln in Painting and Drawing and pursued the degree until 2008 when she made the hard decision to transfer to an animation and media arts specific program.

In 2008 Erica headed to Los Angeles to get her MFA in Experimental Animation and Integrated Media at the California Institutes of the Arts! She graduated in 2012 (after taking a year off to have her son Dallas) and during her tenure there began teaching animation at Inner-City Arts in Downtown Los Angeles. She also participated in an international arts festival in Jakarta, Indonesia where she worked with students at the Jakarta Art Institute to create an interactive animation performance for the National Art Festival.

Erica has been an occasional special faculty at CalArts where she has taught direct technique animation classes, a digital paths class focused on animation processes, as well as her proposed course "The Animated Woman" which focuses on the representation of women in animation both in front and behind the camera. Her course received international press recognition as well as a spin off workshop with animation students at the Royal College of Art in London.

Erica lives in Val Verde, CA with her husband Jeremiah and their two sons Dallas and Raven where she continues to teach, make art, direct the Calibraska Arts Initiative and actively serve on the board of SCV Adventure Play Foundation, a non-profit which she co-founded with her husband in 2014. Erica also is the president of the Val Verde Civic Association, and is on the advisory council for the Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts. and the Val Verde Historical Society.
 
She always looks forward to returning to Nebraska each summer and feels honored by how this once little summer passion project has developed into such a wonderful program supporting so many people.