Preston Singletary: Echoes, Fire, and Shadows

July 11, 2009 – September 19, 2010
Organized by Museum of Glass

The Museum of Glass is proud to present Preston Singletary: Echoes, Fire, and Shadows, the first mid-career survey of this renowned artist. For nearly two decades, Singletary has straddled two cultures—melding his Tlingit ancestry with the dynamism of the Studio Glass Movement—and in the process creating an extraordinarily distinctive and powerful body of work. Drawing from traditional Tlingit art, Singletary has translated the visual vocabulary of patterns, narratives, and systems most closely associated with Native woodcarving and painted art into glass, a material historically associated with Native peoples through an extensive network of trading routes.

Introduced to glassmaking in the Pacific Northwest at an early age, Singletary quickly became highly proficient in the sculptural manipulation of the material and began reexamining the narrative and spiritual traditions of his Tlingit heritage. The physical and metaphorical properties of glass proved ideally suited for this exploration. His unique interpretations of Tlingit myths and legends are visible in a plethora of stunningly beautiful traditional objects and figurative sculptures, manifested through a complex combination of techniques, including glassblowing, sandcarving, and inlaying. The synthesis Singletary creates through his work melds three worlds—modern art, glass, and Tlingit tradition—into a unique whole.

This exhibition, which contains works borrowed from major museum and private collections across the United States, illustrates Singletary’s artistic evolution over the past two decades and culminates in a dynamic new body of work created during his 2008 Visiting Artist Residency at the Museum of Glass. The exhibition also showcases, for the first time, Singletary’s newest and most significant commission to date. This work features a monumental cast-glass triptych, comprising reinterpretations of a densely carved interior house screen suspended between two longhouse posts. Merging video art, video, and music into a multimedia installation, Singletary will create an atmospheric soundscape that resonates on several levels, revealing a new artistic direction.

In conjunction with the exhibition, the Museum is producing a documentary film along with various interviews filmed with Singletary in Alaska. A fully illustrated color catalog featuring essays by Native American scholar Steven C. Brown, Tlingit storyteller and author Walter Porter, and Museum of Glass curator Melissa G. Post accompanies the exhibition.

This exhibition is available to tour beginning fall, 2010. For more information, contact Susan Warner.