"Preston Singletary: Vision Quest"
2002-12-06 until 2002-02-08
William Traver Gallery
Seattle, WA, USA United States of America

Throughout his career, Preston Singletary has continued to diversify his sculptural production while refining his design sensibility. In Vision Quest, Singletary presents 18 new pieces that take his work further into areas of meaning motivated by his Tlingit heritage. Singletary began blowing glass twenty years ago and has worked with many of the top glass artists in the world, including Lino Tagliapietra, Dan Dailey, Dante Marioni, Pino Signoretto and Dale Chihuly.

Singletary quickly developed into an extremely adept glassblower. He later decided to pursue an understanding of Formline Design--the design system followed by the Northwest Coast Native Americans. It was not merely that Singletary applied Northwest Coast designs to his glass vessels that drove his work forward, but rather it was that his formal needs for his new body of work redirected and informed the sculptural content of his glass work. In other words, it was by pursuing his desire to produce works that would participate in Native Culture with real meaning that Singletary developed unusually innovative works in glass such as his blown and hot-sculpted Raven sculptures.

In Vision Quest, Singletary is debuting many new pieces that are more sculptural in form, such as bone forms, rattles, amulets and killer whale sculptures. Singletary explains: The raven rattle has sculpted figures with stylized bodies and cast faces. The ravens head is on the far end of the rattle. The pieces like this refer to the animal spirits sharing their power and knowledge with human beings. There is a kind of dialogue happening even within these, but also through the implicit idea that the animal form in this tool has a real power. This dialogue is very important for me. In fact, the theme of vision quest is a personal statement about where I am at within my work and my spiritual relationship to it. Its a natural development of formline, which really functions through the refinement and the spiritual growth of the artist. I have been learning from Joe David and other carvers who worked with me on the totem pole at Pilchuck. They have helped me open my eyes to details of the work that I hadnt been aware of before. The insights I gain from pursuing my own work serve to strengthen my broader cultural knowledge. I have come to realize that my own art and cultural understanding must be taken together and cannot be separated from traditional knowledge. The work I am doing now reflects the growth and changes that I have been experiencing over the past few years.

Related Links:

Indepth Arts Resources for the State of Washington

Other Important Exhibitions in Seattle