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Trained in literature and entrepreneurship, Rainey is the founder of Glasstire, the online magazine of visual art in Texas and the oldest online-only art magazine in the country. In 2019, she stepped down as publisher after over 18 years at the helm.

She is currently editing a book about the Rice Gallery and writing for magazines.

Rainey has spoken or written about arts journalism at Emory University, the USC Annenberg School, the El Paso Museum of Art, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, College Arts Association, the National Endowment for the Arts, and other places. She has also spoken about caregiving at Houston Methodist Hospital. She lives in Houston.

Trained in literature and entrepreneurship, Rainey is the founder of Glasstire, the online magazine of visual art in Texas and the oldest online-only art magazine in the country. In 2019, she stepped down as publisher after over 18 years at the helm.

She is currently editing a book about the Rice Gallery and writing for magazines.

Rainey has spoken or written about arts journalism at Emory University, the USC Annenberg School, the El Paso Museum of Art, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, College Arts Association, the National Endowment for the Arts, and other places. She has also spoken about caregiving at Houston Methodist Hospital. She lives in Houston.

Trained in literature and entrepreneurship, Rainey is the founder of Glasstire, the online magazine of visual art in Texas and the oldest online-only art magazine in the country. In 2019, she stepped down as publisher after over 18 years at the helm.

She is currently editing a book about the Rice Gallery and writing for magazines.

Rainey has spoken or written about arts journalism at Emory University, the USC Annenberg School, the El Paso Museum of Art, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, College Arts Association, the National Endowment for the Arts, and other places. She has also spoken about caregiving at Houston Methodist Hospital. She lives in Houston.

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Rainey Knudson

May 18, 20211 min read

Rice Gallery: White Webb (181 words)

Earlier this year it seemed there was a sudden spate of articles about Maria Sibylla Merian, the celebrated 17th-century German naturalist and artist who is famous for her engravings of tropical plants and animals. I first encountered Merian's work in the 2005 installation at Rice Gallery by interior designers Matthew White and Frank Webb.

For their installation Eminent Domain, White Webb created a field of astroturf and built a gazebo using hyper-enlarged antique engravings from a hodge podge of periods and styles. The gallery's walls were painted a vivid pea green and huge 3-D reproductions of Merian's prints of insects and flowers jutted out from the walls. These garden elements later found a home at the Houston Arboretum when the installation came down.

During its 22-year run, Rice Gallery invited designers and architects as well as artists to create new works in its unusual glass-fronted space. The only hard-and-fast rule at the Gallery was that things be site-specific installation. And that they be wonderful.

(White Webb are included in One Thing Well, a forthcoming book about Rice Gallery's program of site-specific installation art, published in fall 2021.)

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