Preston Singletary
Preston Singletary
Preston Singletary (Tlingit) is a Seattle-based artist whose practice has established a singular position across contemporary Indigenous art and Studio Glass. For more than four decades, he has brought Tlingit formline, mythology, and ancestral knowledge into glass, transforming a material outside traditional Tlingit practice into a powerful vehicle for cultural expression. A member of the Eagle moiety, Kaagwaantaan (Box House), Killer Whale clan, Singletary traces his cultural lineage through generations of Tlingit women. His work challenges fixed ideas of what materials Indigenous artists should use, asserting culture as living, adaptive, and continually evolving.
Singletary began working in glass in Seattle in 1982, developing his technical foundation at Glass Eye Studios, Pilchuck Glass School, and the studio of Benjamin Moore, where he worked with artists including Dante Marioni, Richard Royal, Dan Dailey, and Lino Tagliapietra. Work in Sweden introduced him to Scandinavian design, while his experience with European and Venetian glass traditions gave him a technical vocabulary he would ultimately make distinctly his own. The decisive shift came when Singletary began bringing Tlingit stories and design systems into his glass practice. Blown and sculpted forms, sand-carved surfaces, and the discipline of formline became a means of carrying ancestral narratives into contemporary art.
Storytelling remains central to Singletary’s practice, extending from individual sculpture to immersive museum installations. His major traveling exhibition Raven and the Box of Daylight, originating at the Museum of Glass, uses glass, sound, light, and spatial experience to tell the Tlingit story of Raven bringing light to the world. Alongside his studio practice, Singletary has taught and collaborated with Native American, Māori, Hawaiian, and Australian Aboriginal artists, contributing to a broader movement of Indigenous artists working through contemporary materials. His work is represented in major international collections including The British Museum, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Seattle Art Museum, Corning Museum of Glass, and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and Museum of Glass in Tacoma Washington.