Glasstire: Texas Visual Art
Randee Silv
May 2020
Robert Rauschenberg, Untitled [glass tires], 1997,
Blown glass and silver-plated brass, 30 x 28 x 24 inches, private collection
I was introduced to the Texas based publication Glasstire by one of Arteidolia’s writers and read that it was launched in 2001 by founder and publisher Rainey Knudson. By establishing an online profile, art journalism could move beyond limited distribution and standardized mainstream boundaries. Glasstire became the first web-only arts platform in the country, and others were soon to follow.
Knudson did take a go at starting a print magazine before Glasstire that she says was “terrible” and asks anyone who still has a copy to burn it. But, it did encourage her to set out on road trips to find out what artists were doing, which was when she noticed that each art hub was distinct and that each was “interconnected and cross-pollinating.” In wanting to capture the dynamic spirit & character of the people, & the state, Knudson envisioned Glasstire as a “connective tissue between art & artists & audience.”
Knudson named the site in homage to the cast-glass tire sculptures of Port Arthur native Robert Rauschenberg that she’d seen in Houston at a 1998 retrospective and to the driving distances she’d already clocked.
In 2019, Knudson felt that, after 18 years, the magazine had long achieved a solid identity and that maybe this was a good time for her to step down and pursue other ventures. A “farewell tour” was organized around her talk “Art, Media and the Digital Dumpster Fire,” where she spoke candidly about the ins & outs, the ups & downs, of running a media platform with worldwide readership that has given artists from all over Texas a global voice.
Brandon Zech is Glasstire’s current publisher and Christina Rees its Editor-in-Chief. Since those early days when slides & postcards still had to be scanned in order to highlight exhibitions, Glasstire has grown into an amazingly diverse online source that has decidedly helped to put the Texas art scene on the map.
Welcome to Glasstire. Go see some art!
TOP FIVE IN TX: highlighting events across Texas
“Christopher Blay is joined by artist Colette Copeland to chat about five ways artists, organizations and spaces continue to get their work in front of an audience during the pandemic shutdown.”
5 MINUTE VIDEO TOURS: of Texas art exhibitions
Via Ballroom: “Longilonge is the first solo museum exhibition in the United Stated of noted Brazilian artist Solange Pessoa. The show includes newly commissioned works that respond to the cultural and natural landscape in West Texas, alongside important existing pieces made in Minas Gerais, Brazil, where the artist lives and works.”
ART DIRT: a podcast of biweekly art news
“Brandon Zech and Christina Rees talk about Marina Abramović, the Kennedy assassination, and why conspiracy theories and art tend not to mix.”
“People in the art world are kind of Teflon about this. There’s a lot of skepticism. It just doesn’t tend to circulate in the industry that we work in. So when it happens it’s really strange.”
REVIEWS:
Installation view of the Márquez exhibition at the Harry Ransom Center, UT Austin
“Oh, Solitude: Gabriel García Márquez” by Neil Fauerso
“The current exhibit chronicling the life of Colombian Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel García Márquez is far more than a mere collection of his papers, notebooks, and photographs. It is an attempt at a holographic evocation of a man whose life and works are so spectacular that he became an archetype — a genre unto himself.”
Rainey Knudson “Art, Media and the Digital Dumpster Fire”
“I feel lucky to have been there at the beginning of internet journalism. It has been a joy to travel throughout Texas through the years, working with gifted writers who tell the stories of the people in our statewide art scene. Our tagline is ‘Go See Some Art.’ It sounds simple, but it’s a simple idea that I believe in.”
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