By SHANNON HAUGLAND
Sentinel Staff Writer
An internationally recognized Northwest Coast artist is in Sitka this weekend as the keynote speaker at The Friends of Sheldon Jackson Museum annual meeting on Saturday.
Preston Singletary works in glass, and draws upon designs from his Tlingit cultural heritage. His work is featured at museums around the world, including the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.
His talk, “From the Firepit of the Canoe People,” will be presented 2 p.m. Saturday at Centennial Hall, and at the same time over Zoom.
Seating will be limited at Centennial Hall, and a seat reservation is required. Only a few seats are still available, organizers said. No reservation is required to attend by Zoom. Seat reservations and the Zoom link are available at friendsofsjm.com/AnnualMeeting/.
Singletary is Kaagwaantaan, Killer Whale from the Box House, and lives and works in Seattle. His work is in museums all over the world, including the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian; Alaska Museum of Natural History; Seattle Art Museum; Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm, Sweden; the British Museum in London; and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
His most recent exhibition, “Preston Singletary: Raven and the Box of Daylight,” opened in late January at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.
Jacqueline Fernandez-Hamberg, Sheldon Jackson Museum curator of collections, said Singletary is the most well-known artist the museum and the Friends of the Sheldon Jackson Museum has hosted as guest speaker in her nearly 10 years as curator.
Asked about the significance of the artist and his work, Fernandez-Hamberg said it’s best described by Singletary himself: “Glass brings another dimension to Native American art. Its luminous quality and shadow effect are like a spirit that appears when this lighting is right.”
“This dimension that Preston creates in glass is rooted in his ancestry and in cultural and historical Tlingit traditions and aesthetic,” Fernandez-Hamberg said. “He brings Northwest Coast themes of the supernatural, transformation, animal spirits, shamanism, and traditional Tlingit basketry designs to the world while he literally blends and fuses this European glass tradition with Northwest Native design.
“I think that for Preston, it’s highly focused on honoring his ancestors with modern materials, sharing that interweaving of the contemporary, the traditional and the ever changing with the world. This is one of the many things that makes contemporary Alaska Native artwork so interesting – this testament to survivance and resilience,” she said.
Fernandez-Hamberg said that in addition to accomplishing all of that, his work is “simply aesthetically stunning.”
In his talk Saturday, Singletary will describe his creative process, combining Tlingit culture with the material of glass, Friends of the SJ Museum said in a news release.
“Using a broad range of inspiration, Preston fuses mythologies, genetic memory, spiritual connection, modern art, glass and music with Tlingit culture,” the news release said.
Friends co-president Rosemary Carlton said the nonprofit organization is pleased to have Singletary as a speaker at the annual meeting.
“He’s doing a medium we’ve never had – Northwest Coast working in glass,” she said. “He’s recognized all over the world – we’re just real lucky to have him come here and have someone working in such a unique artform.”
Admission to the Friends annual meeting is free both in person and on Zoom.
