2009 Michael Upchurch:
"The way Preston Singletary tells it, he didn't find his way into glass art.
Glass art found its way into him.
Singletary, who grew up in Seattle's Wallingford neighborhood, had his heart set on being a musician when he was in his teens. But glassmaking, his "day job" as he saw it, turned out to be his true calling.
Take a look at "Echoes, Fire, and Shadows," his retrospective show at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, and the idea that glassmaking was a fallback career for the 46-year-old becomes a little dumbfounding.
Even his apprentice work is exquisite. He may have been trying to find his voice with such finely crafted pieces as "Alligator Goblet" (1999) and the two siren-mouthed vases of "Untitled" (1996). But they're pleasures to behold.
Still, it was through his work inspired by Tlingit design that Singletary — whose mother is half-Tlingit, half-Filipina — came into his own.
Singletary's first piece to draw on Northwest Coast art design, "Wolf Hat," dates back to 1989. It predicted things to come.
But it wasn't until a decade later that Singletary fully immersed himself in his Tlingit heritage, translating traditional tribal objects (amulets, rattles, hats, masks, storage boxes) and figures of tribal legend (eagles, ravens, wolves, whales) into a most unlikely medium: blown and "sandcarved" glass.
Glass that doesn't look like glass. Glass that "acts" like wood or stone or bones. Glass that covers territory glass has never covered before.
[...]
He isn't sure what he missed by not attending college or art school: "I don't know if I was preserved or ruined by it. In a way, it left me open to thinking about things in my own way. I wasn't really that good in school in the first place."
While he jokes he'll have a hard time explaining that to his children, he does think there are other ways of achieving the same goal. "I was really fortunate to learn through practical experience."
As for the sidewinding path that led him to explore Northwest Coast design in such an unlikely medium, Singletary sees it as a kind of destiny:
"I think it brings another dimension to indigenous art. So I've found that's sort of my role. I didn't choose that in the very beginning. But it chose me to some degree. It gives my life a sense of purpose, after all these years. Finally, I have something.""
Excerpted From:
Upchurch, M. "Tlingit heritage helps glass artist Preston Singletary break new ground." The Seattle Times. November 8, 2009. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/thearts/2010219579_singletary08.html?cmpid=2628
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