NOTICE: Tickets are no longer available for this event and the celebration has been moved to the Civic Center Music Hall across the street. Due to unforeseen circumstances, there is no access to Museum galleries today. Please visit our social media accounts for more details. Thank you!
Revised Members’ Preview Celebration Schedule:
Friday, November 10 | Civic Center Music Hall
5 pm | Celebration Begins | Gather with members for light bites by Kam’s Kookery.
6 pm | A Conversation with Artist and Curator | Seating in the Little Theatre is limited and first come, first served.
Join artist Preston Singletary (Tlingit) and curator Miranda Belarde-Lewis, PhD (Zuni/Tlingit) in conversation about the exhibition Preston Singletary: Raven and the Box of Daylight. Through dozens of glass sculptures, projections, and sound, the exhibition presents a Tlingit origin story, passed down from generation to generation through storytelling traditions. Singletary and Belarde-Lewis will share insights into the making of the multisensory exhibition that tells the story of Raven and how light was brought to the world by releasing the stars, moon, and sun.
ABOUT PRESTON SINGLETARY (TLINGIT)
Photo by Jovelle Tamayo. Courtesy of the American Craft Council Library and Archives.
Singletary’s art has become synonymous with the relationship between Tlingit culture and fine art. His glass sculptures deal with themes of Tlingit mythology and traditional designs, while also using music to shape his contemporary perspective of Native culture.
Singletary started blowing glass at the Glass Eye studios in Seattle, WA in 1982, where he grew up and continues to work and live. He developed his skills as a production glass maker and attended the Pilchuck Glass School. Singletary began working at the glass studio of Benjamin Moore, where he broadened his skills by assisting Dante Marioni, Richard Royal, Dan Dailey, and Lino Tagliapietra. It was there where Singletary started to develop his own work. In 1993 he traveled for work to Sweden where he was influenced by Scandinavian design and met his future wife, Åsa Sandlund.
In 2000 Singletary received an honorary name from elder, Joe David (Nuu Chah Nulth), and in 2009 Singletary received an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Puget Sound (Tacoma, WA). Forty years of glass making, creating music, and working together with elders has put him in a position of being a keeper of cultural knowledge, while forging new directions in new materials and concepts of Indigenous arts.
Now recognized internationally, Singletary’s works are included in the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, MA), the Seattle Art Museum (Seattle, WA), the Ethnographic Museum (Stockholm, Sweden), The National Museum of Scotland (Edinburgh, UK) The British Museum (London, UK), The National Museum of The American Indian, Smithsonian Institution (Washington DC) as well as two solo exhibitions that toured multiple venues originating with the Museum of Glass (Tacoma, WA).
ABOUT MIRANDA BELARDE-LEWIS, PHD (ZUNI/TLINGIT)
Guest curator for the exhibition Preston Singletary: Raven and the Box of Daylight, Miranda Belarde-Lewis, PhD, is an assistant professor and the inaugural Jill and Joe McKinstry Endowed Faculty Fellow of Native North American Indigenous Knowledge at the University of Washington’s Information School. She is also an independent curator who works with artists and tribal, state, federal, and international institutions and organizations to promote Native artists and their work.
She works to highlight and celebrate Native artists, their processes, and the exquisite pieces they create. She has taught at Northwest Indian College and the University of Washington. She is enrolled at Zuni Pueblo and a member of the Takdeintáan Clan of the Tlingit Nation. She is a basketball mom.
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Image Credit: Preston Singletary (American Tlingit, born 1963). Naa Kahídi (Clan House) (detail), 2008. Kiln-cast and sand-carved glass; water-jet cut, inlaid, and laminated medallion; 90 1/2 x 120 1/2 x 8 in. Courtesy of the artist. Photo by Russell Johnson.
