Preston Singletary (born 1963) is a Native American

glass artist Studio glass is the modern use of glass as an artistic medium to produce sculptures or three-dimensional artworks. The glass objects created are intended to make a sculptural or decorative statement. Though usage varies, the term is properly res ...

Biography

Preston Singletary was born in 1963 in San Francisco, California. He grew up in the

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

-area listening to stories told by his great-grandparents, who were both full

Tlingit The Tlingit ( or ; also spelled Tlinkit) are indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. Their language is the Tlingit language (natively , pronounced ),

. Shortly after graduating high school, Singletary (who was actively pursuing a career as a musician at the time) was asked by Dante Marioni to work as a night watchman at what was then the Glass Eye, a Seattle glass-blowing studio. Singletary quickly moved from being night watchman to working the day shift to eventually joining one of the studio’s production teams. In 1984, Singletary took part in a workshop at

Pilchuck Glass School Pilchuck Glass School is an international center for glass art education. The school was founded in 1971 by Dale Chihuly, Anne Gould Hauberg (1917-2016), and John H Hauberg (1916-2002). The campus is located on a former tree farm in Stanwood, W ...

for the first time. He has since been involved in Pilchuck as a teacher, student, and more recently as a member of its Board of Trustees. Singletary has blown glass around the world in countries such as Sweden, Italy, and Finland. In the late 1980s, Singletary began incorporating traditional Tlingit themes into his work and reaching out to other Northwest Coast Native American artists.Ganglehoff, Bonnie
"Glass Act."
''Southwest Art.''

Work

Early on, Singletary’s work drew heavily from European glass artworks, especially those done in the

Modernist Modernism is both a philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, an ...

style. Today he is perhaps best known for his use of glass to express and explore traditional Tlingit themes. Many of his works reference clan crests, including the killer whale, which his family claims. Singletary has worked extensively with other native artists creating glass art works such as the Founders Totem Pole (2001) and Devilfish Prow, one of a series created in collaboration with Maori artist Lewis Tamihana Gardiner (2007).Museum of Glass, Preston Singletary: Echoes, Fire, and Shadows, exhibition proposal for traveling exhibition. In 2018 Singletary received the Washington State Governor's Arts and Heritage Award. In 2022 Singletary’s work was featured in an exhibition entitled ''Raven and the Box of Daylight'' at the

National Museum of the American Indian The National Museum of the American Indian is a museum in the United States devoted to the culture of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. It is part of the Smithsonian Institution group of museums and research centers. The museum has three ...

. The same year Singletary became a Fellow of the

American Craft Council The American Craft Council (ACC) is a national non-profit organization that champions craft based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Founded in 1943 by Aileen Osborn Webb, the council hosts national craft shows and conferences, publishes a quarterly maga ...

. Several of his pieces were acquired by the

Smithsonian American Art Museum The Smithsonian American Art Museum (commonly known as SAAM, and formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian Institution. Together with its branch museum, the Renwick Gallery, SAAM holds o ...

as part of the

Renwick Gallery The Renwick Gallery is a branch of the Smithsonian American Art Museum located in Washington, D.C. that displays American craft and decorative arts from the 19th to 21st century. The gallery is housed in a National Historic Landmark building that ...

's 50th Anniversary Campaign.

Collections

Brooklyn Museum of Art The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown H ...

, Brooklyn, NY *

Canadian Museum of History The Canadian Museum of History (french: Musée canadien de l’histoire) is a national museum on anthropology, Canadian history, cultural studies, and ethnology in Gatineau, Quebec, Canada. The purpose of the museum is to promote the heritage of C ...

Corning Museum of Glass The Corning Museum of Glass is a museum in Corning, New York in the United States, dedicated to the art, history, and science of glass. It was founded in 1951 by Corning Glass Works and currently has a collection of more than 50,000 glass obje ...

, Corning, NY (Rakow Commission) *

Detroit Institute of Arts The Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), located in Midtown Detroit, Michigan, has one of the list of largest art museums, largest and most significant art collections in the United States. With over 100 galleries, it covers with a major renovation a ...

, Detroit, MI *

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 paintings and more than 450,000 works ...

, MA *

Smithsonian Institution The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...

, Washington, DC *

Seattle Art Museum The Seattle Art Museum (commonly known as SAM) is an art museum located in Seattle, Washington, United States. It operates three major facilities: its main museum in downtown Seattle; the Seattle Asian Art Museum (SAAM) in Volunteer Park on Cap ...

, Seattle, WA

References

Bibliography

*Kastner, Caroline, ed. Fusing Traditions: Transformations in Glass by Native American Artists. Museum of Craft & Folk Art, San Francisco, c. 2002. *Ganglehoff, Bonnie, “Glass Act,” Southwest Art, c. 1999

* Museum of Glass. ''Preston Singletary: Echoes, Fire, and Shadows," 2009.

External links

Preston Singletary , 2022 ACC Fellow
video
Preston Singletary on his heritage and Tlingit mythology
video from Craft in America {{DEFAULTSORT:Singletary, Preston 1963 births Living people 20th-century Native Americans 21st-century Native Americans Artists from San Francisco American glass artists Native American sculptors Recipients of the Rakow Commission Sculptors from California Tlingit people Date of birth missing (living people) Native American male artists Artists from Seattle