Rainey Straus

After an extended time as a designer in the Bay Area tech world, Rainey returned to creative practice. Earlier projects explored the impact of technology on the body/mind and the world of computer games as art. Rainey’s current inquiry focuses on building relationships with the more-than-human world.

Her recent inquiry, The Old Growth Project, was presented as a solo exhibition at the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art and as part of Forest Unseen at the Petaluma Arts Center, The New Geologic Epoch with Ecoartspace, and Art & Ecology at the O’Hanlon Center for the Arts. In 2024, she was an artist-in-residence at the Morris Graves Foundation and the Lucid Art Foundation, and will join the BigCi environmental residency in Australia in 2025. She has participated in past exhibitions at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the San Jose Museum of Art, and the Design Exchange Museum in Toronto, Canada. Her work has been featured in Dark Mountain Journal, Sculpture Magazine, Rhizome Online, Videogames and Art (edited by Andy Clarke and Grethe Mitchell), The San Francisco Chronicle, and The San Jose Mercury News. Rainey holds a BFA in Painting from SUNY Purchase and an MFA in Sculpture from the California College of the Arts. She lives on the unceded land of the Coast Miwok in present-day Marin County, Northern California.


Artist Statement

I create paintings, photographs, and sculptures to build relationships with the more-than-human world. My practice is rooted in direct engagement with specific places, exploring the entanglements between humans and nature. Through this process, I uncover hidden energies and non-verbal narratives that emerge in interspecies conversations. My work questions how we perceive and build relationships with place, simultaneously articulating the aliveness of the world while navigating collapse and destruction. I believe that beauty, awe, and wonder inspire action. My projects invite inquiry: What stories does the land tell? How do we grow reciprocity? How might we live on a changing planet?

The Old Growth Project was inspired by 3D (LiDAR) scans captured in the redwood groves of Humboldt County in Northern California. Seeking to move past a human-centered perspective, I developed a three-fold process of “thinking with”: engaging the human body by walking and sensing in specific environments, using technology—LiDAR scans—to alter human visual perception, and imagining other bodies, embodying the physicality of trees and their umwelt. The resulting paintings speak to the essence of treeness, expressing the choreography of life as trees become land, sky, mountain, stream, fish, and animals. The project highlights the inherent right of trees to exist beyond their use in the human world, working to counter the dominant story of separation and dominion over nature. In the context of Land and Longing, The Old Growth Project conjures both the immense loss of habitat—only 4% of the original groves remain—and the profound desire for a world that honors and respects our more-than-human kin.


raineystraus.net