From the exhibition catalog:

“In Confluence, Singletary hits a new note.  While still responding to the powerful voices of the Tlingit tradition, he is also embracing the modernist spirit that informed his artistic development.”

Here are just a few pieces from this exhibition, which opens this Thursday, April 5 and will be on view until May 13.

Moonlit Swan, 2012

Dancing in the Water, 2012

Spirit of a Goose, 2012

Blue Crescent, 2012

Spirit of an Eagle, 2012

Preston is exhibiting works with Blue Rain Gallery of Santa Fe at two art festivals this month.  Several new pieces are on display including these:

The Boy With the Light, 2011

Octopus and Land Otter, 2011

Man in the Moon, 2011

Inquire at BlueRainGallery.com or see them on display!

Preston Singletary & Joe David at Museum of Glass, Tacoma, WA. Photo by Ken Emly.

Ka Ka Win Chealth: Transformations in Glass is a contemporary Pacific Northwest Coast exhibition featuring 27 collaborative sculptures by Joe David and Preston Singletary with additional solo artwork.  Here are just a few of their collaborative pieces:

Wickaninnish

Tlingit Killer Whale Bracelet Sculpture

Sea Eagle Headdress

Red Tail Hawk Shaman’s Rattle

Shrine Figures and Skulls

Blue Heron Egg

Speaker's Mask

You can contact Preston Singletary Glass at: studio@prestonsingletary.com

Preston’s artwork is available from these galleries:

• Blue Rain Gallery – Santa Fe, NM
• Holsten Galleries – Online
• Schantz Galleries – Stockbridge, MA
• Spirit Wrestler Gallery – Vancouver, BC
• Traver Gallery – Seattle and Tacoma, WA

This unique exhibition combines the talents of Preston and his longtime friend and colleague:  together they have produced pieces that meld their talents of Tlingit design and classic Italian cane work.

Here are just a few of the pieces that will be on display in Chicago November 4-6.

Here it is at Bronzesmith, after getting a patina:

A limited run of 10 full-scale monumental bronzes are available for sale exclusively through Blue Rain Gallery: Bronze Totem.

Stay tuned for updates on the glass version this autumn!

A positive plaster version of the pole was made so that our friends at FireArt Glass in Portland could take molds from its three parts.  They are still working on making the molds and experimenting with the kiln-casting process.

In May 2010, the pole was finished….Preston went to California to visit and get started on the casting process, to be discussed in a future post.

The finished pole:

The project began in early 2009 when Preston and his longtime friend and collaborator, woodcarver David Svenson, co-designed a full-scale totem depicting a beloved family story about Preston’s great-grandmother as a child.

Preston's Great-Grandparents, Susie and Dionesio Gubatayao

They went out into the woods those uncles.  They were out gathering food.  That’s when they came across a bear out there in the woods.  They shot that bear, but what they didn’t know was that it was a mother bear that came in between the uncles and the cubs.  That is what happened.

They shot that bear and then they saw the cubs.  They took those cubs back to the village Douglas.  That is what they called it at that time.  That is where my great grandmother lived.  She was called Susie Johnson.  She lived there at that time.  She was a young girl then.  She was young.

She liked that bear cub that they uncles brought there.  She wanted that bear cub as her pet.  Her parents wanted her to be happy so they let her keep that bear cub at home.  She kept it at home and raised it like one might have a dog.  My great grandmother, Susie, loved that bear!  What a thing to have a grizzly bear for a pet!  She would get food for that hear and feed it, and take care of it.  She made a bed for that bear and it lived there with the family.

There was a woman who was Russian.  There were a lot of Russians there.  She made taffy and would sell it in the streets.  When she sold it in the streets, the bear would smell the taffy.  That bear loved the taffy that it would get from my great grandmother.

Every time that Russian woman would go through the street with that taffy, the bear would smell it.  After a while she wanted to get that bear some more taffy, so she went to get some berries from the fields at the base of the mountains.  She took those berries back to the village.  She had those berries that she sold for money to buy taffy.  That’s how she got taffy for that bear.

After a while that bear got big.  Too big to keep around the house.  The bear was getting too dangerous and big to keep.  So her uncles took it back to the woods.  They left that bear in the woods so it wouldn’t hurt anyone in the village.  She cried when they took that bear away.  She cried, but after a while she knew why the uncles took that bear away.  Because it was getting too big.  Even after it was gone, she cried sometimes.  My great grandmother loved that bear.  – Preston Singletary, 2001

Preston found inspiration from this story and produced a small table-top scale glass totem depicting it in 1998. He has revisited the form several times over the years, but this project will be the definitive physical embodiment of the tale.

Family Story Totem, 2004

From early 2009 to earlier this year, Svenson carved the design into a large log of red cedar.  Molds were then taken of the carving to produce a plaster version for further casting.  The totem exists now in its original wooden form, here in the Seattle studio, and as a monumental bronze – just produced by Bronzesmith Fine Art Foundry for the outdoor sculpture market, available through Blue Rain Gallery.

Over the coming weeks, we’ll unveil photos of the carving and casting processes, as well as images of the finished wood and bronze totems.  This will all lead up to the goal of the project: a full-scale solid cast glass version, the prototype of which is currently being tested by master caster Ray Ahlgren at Fireart Glass in Portland, Oregon.

Stay tuned for more!

To give you a peek into the daily workings of the studio, here are some photos taken by our favorite photographer, Russell Johnson, of our three full-time artist’s assistants: Brittaney Shanta, Terri Rau, and Maurice Caldwell.  They’re busy working on pieces for the upcoming collaborative exhibition between Preston and his longtime friend Dante Marioni, to be premiered at SOFA Chicago and presented by Blue Rain Gallery of Santa Fe, New Mexico!

Dante and Preston have been friends since high school – with Dante introducing Preston to glass art – but this is the first time the have professionally collaborated.  The resulting pieces embody the strengths of both artists: the intricate canework, elegant vessel forms, and traditional Italian techniques of Marioni, combined with the strong formline design, Native American symbolism, and dynamic sandcarving of Singletary.   Look for images of the finished work here in November, and for sale via Blue Rain Gallery!

All photos © Russell Johnson, 2011.