April 5 - June 1, 2025
From Umbrella Gallery:
“Show Synopsis
Interdisciplinary artist Abigail Rainey will present her debut Dallas solo exhibition titled Amid the Passing Hours, at Umbrella Gallery in the heart of Deep Ellum.
The exhibition will present the artist’s recent research about the overlap of the mundane and the sacred. Interested in the relevancy of spirituality in contemporary contexts, Abi’s work explores the intangible essence of wonder in everyday life. In her practice of active archival, she seeks to pay attention to what she pays attention to – noticing, extracting, and recontextualizing fleeting pockets of beauty in common circumstances, extending them beyond their temporal life. Via subtle washes of hue, fragmentation, visual layering, and delicate renderings, Abi re-creates the pause she personally experiences for viewers through a slow read of the work.
Viewers are invited to attend the exhibition’s reception on Saturday, May 23rd at 6pm, where they can enjoy light refreshments and hear the artist discuss the work. The artist will also be leading a workshop, with a date TBA. Participants may go to abigailraineyart.com or @abi_bydesign on Instagram for updates about the workshop and to learn more about the artist.
Show’s Artist Statement
My creative investigations stem from a consciousness of home, inheritance, restoration, and permanence. I think of my practice as somewhat circular, navigating the ethereal regions of memory and spirituality, then grounding in the tangible, touchable everyday life, before returning again to the atmosphere. I am interested in the tension between the spiritual and the tangible, exploring how these disparate perceptions of life converge and hold meaning for each other in my own everyday experiences. Referencing motifs of Christian iconography such as halos, gold, light, stained glass, banners, and arches, I recontextualize the redemptive narrative of Christianity, raising questions of God’s significance in contemporary human experiences.
Amid the Passing Hours shows the body of my most recent work, in which I investigate the coexistence of the mundane and the sacred. With the work, I ask — why are we sometimes arrested by the beauty of the most common thing (the playful scatter of leaves on a sidewalk, the slanting lines of light on a bedspread)? What is that intangible, wonderful something that is there in that space and moment? I seek to notice, extract, and recontextualize these common everyday occurrences, extending them beyond their fleeting life. Visually, the work plays on this tension — delicate, tight renderings pull to the earth airy palettes and soft washes. Salvaged fabrics, worn supple by years of use, are segmented, stretched, and manipulated across, around, and through picture frames, wire, curtain rods, lamp armatures, and other found domestic objects.
This “paying attention to what I pay attention to” has led me to explore how art can function as a mode of restoration. I investigate how delicate renderings, subtle hue shifts, storied materials, and minimal compositions can create space for pause. Through my work, I strive to embody what slow-artist and activist Makoto Fujimura describes as a “citizen artist,” navigating across personal and societal rifts through generative work that invites pause and contemplation. The slow read of my work and the resultant space for contemplation enacts the theory that mindfulness leads to change.
Through this work, I hope viewers can simply take a breath, look for the wonder in their own lives, and consider what can be found amid the passing hours.
About the Artist
Abi Rainey is an interdisciplinary artist and art educator from May, TX, currently based in Denton, TX. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Art Education in 2020 and anticipates the completion of her Master’s of Fine Art in Visual Arts from Texas Woman’s University (TWU) in May 2025. As an art educator, Abi has worked with students in a variety of settings including both grade school and collegiate classrooms, and led workshops for art institutions, conferences, retreats, and other gatherings. Her work has been exhibited across Texas, including Dallas Contemporary, 500X Gallery, and the Patterson-Appleton Arts Center. Abi’s debut solo exhibition Uncommon Grace: all that I don’t deserve was at the Dorothy and Wendell Mayes Art Gallery in Brownwood, TX, and her upcoming exhibition Amid the Passing Hours at Umbrella Gallery in Deep Ellum thi spring will mark her first solo show in the Dallas area. Abi’s recent honors include the Virginia Chandler Dyke Scholarship, for which she was the recipient for the School of Arts and Sciences at Texas Woman’s University. She was also recently selected for the Experiential Student Scholars Program for an arts-based research project grant, also at Texas Woman’s. In 2024, Abi won the first prize for the 13th Biennial Artist Book Competition held by the University of North Texas Libraries. Abi is currently a graduate teaching assistant at Texas Woman’s University, where she enjoys teaching painting and drawing”
Reception: May 3, 2025 | 6–8 pm
2803 Taylor St.
Dallas, 75226 Texas
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