Preston Singletary

Preston Kochéin Singletary (b. 1963, San Francisco; lives in Seattle) is an internationally recognized glass artist of Tlingit descent.

Singletary began blowing glass at the Glass Eye studios in Seattle, WA in 1982. He developed his skills as a production glass maker, and attended the Pilchuck Glass School, going on to work at the glass studio of Benjamin Moore. There, he broadened his skills by assisting Dante Marioni, Richard Royal, Dan Dailey and Lino Tagliapietra, and started to develop his own work. In 1993, a professional trip to Sweden led to the influence of Scandinavian design, and the introduction to his future wife, Åsa Sandlund.

In 2000 Singletary received an honorary name from elder Joe David (Nuu Chah Nulth), a significant moment in his relationship to his Tlingit ethnicity, and self-acceptance as a keeper of cultural knowledge. Over forty years of glass making, creating music and working together with elders, he has continued to forge new directions in use of materials and in concepts of Indigenous arts with Indigneous practitioners internationally.

Singletary’s works of public art have been installed in multiple locations in the Northwest; other works are included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Seattle Art Museum; the Ethnographic Museum, Stockholm; The National Museum of Scotland; The British Museum; and The Smithsonian National Museum of The American Indian, among others. Two solo exhibitions he originated with the Museum of Glass, Tacoma, have travelled nationally. One of these, “Raven and the Box of Daylight,” curated by Dr. Miranda Belarde-Lewis, is currently on view at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC.

Preston Singletary’s work is represented by Blue Rain Gallery, Santa Fe; Schantz Galleries, Stockbridge; and Traver Gallery, Seattle.


www.prestonsingletary.com