Luminosity: Native Glass Art by Preston Singletary, Raven Skyriver, and Dan Friday

Exhibition Dates:

October 7, 2021 - November 27, 2021

Involved Artists:

Preston Singletary, Raven Skyriver, Dan Friday

Featured Works

Seattle has a front-row seat to enjoy the fruition of a dynamic art movement: Northwest Native Glass Art. This movement is the result of the fusion of two of the region’s most significant art genres—Native Art and Studio Glass Art.

Stonington Gallery dedicates this autumn season to celebrating three Indigenous master glass artists of the Pacific Northwest Coast: Preston Singletary (Tlingit), Raven Skyriver (Tlingit), and Dan Friday (Lummi) in our October-November three-person exhibition: Luminosity.

These artists continue to push the boundaries of glass as a contemporary Native art form as they honor and share their Indigenous heritage through motifs and the luminous medium of glass.

Preston Singletary (Tlingit) creates works in glass, bronze, and on paper. Singletary uses intricate Northwest Coast formline design to render traditional objects and shamanic tools, woven hats and baskets, and mythical characters in the glass. Singletary is known for his collaborations with Indigenous artists from around the world, and in this exhibition, he continues his collaborative creations with master glassblower, Raven Skyriver (Tlingit).

Raven Skyriver (Tlingit) blows and hot-sculpts glass marine animals from oceans and river systems that are threatened by pollution, ocean acidification, and over-fishing. Skyriver uses the techniques he has learned from blowing with William Morris and other glass luminaries to render lifelike creatures, giving us eye-to-eye encounters with deep-sea creatures we don’t often see. In this exhibit, he presents a number of new creatures in addition to a few made in collaboration with renowned glass artist, Preston Singletary (Tlingit).

Dan Friday (Lummi) is inspired by the material culture of the Lummi people: the gear with which they reef net fish, one of the world’s oldest and most sustainable salmon-fishing techniques; the totem poles carved by his great-grandfather Joseph R. Hillaire (Kwul-kwul’t); and the cedar bark woven baskets and goat fur blankets of the great Lummi weavers.

Stonington Gallery has played an important role in building the bridge between traditional Northwest Coast Native art and studio glass and fostering its development. We hope you will join us in the gallery and online to experience Luminosity!