2024 Members Showcase Rainey Straus: The Old Growth Project

Exhibition Dates:
* April 13 – June 23, 2024

2024 Members Showcase
Rainey Straus: The Old Growth Project

The Old Growth Project speaks to the essence of “treeness” and a Redwood’s inherent right to be beyond its uses to the human world – an alternative story being told.

Rainey Straus

My practice responds to the unfolding absences of the climate crisis. I find it impossible to move through the world unaffected by human-caused changes.

Viscerally, the death of trees in California, the Southwest, and the Mountain West have embodied this— hiking now is often a gut-wrenching experience of loss.

My work is a requiem for the diminishing web of life and an act of resistance.

I make cyanotypes and paintings deeply connected to direct experiences of walking the land. The cyanotypes, made over multiple days of hiking, tell the stories of time, form, and events that have shaped specific sites.

The paintings explore old-growth forests filtered through the lens of technology (3D or LiDar scans.) The final compositions are distorted fragments that mirror the objectification of the natural world and our disconnect.

I am interested in how we perceive and build relationships with specific places. My work simultaneously expresses the aliveness of the world while navigating collapse and destruction.

For me, beauty, awe, and wonder inspire action. These projects invite inquiry; what stories does the land tell, how do we grow reciprocity, and how might we live on a changing planet?