Preston Singletary

Introducing the newest monumental work by Preston Singletary to be cast in lead crystal, “Killer Whale Totem”.

Presenting a glass Clan House screen and house posts at the Sealaska Heritage Institute in Juneau, Alaska.

Family Story Totem series is a monumental project more than 5 years in the making: a 7 foot tall 3-dimensional glass totem 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 has been commissioned to design guitars for C.F. Martin Guitar Co., and has auctioned some to benefit the EMP Museum in Seattle.

The Museum of Glass in Tacoma, WA, organized Preston's traveling exhibition Preston Singletary: Echoes, Fire, and Shadows in 2008, challenging him to create his most ambitious work to date. Clan House is a 16-by-10-foot cast-glass triptych that references the large-scale Tlingit crest designs that appeared in the interior of traditional longhouses.

Commissioned by Seattle University in 2011, Transformations is made from cut aluminum and flat glass. The designs are abstract and monumental - Tlingit formline in its purest form.

Pendleton Woolen Mills commissioned Preston Singletary to design the 2011 American Indian College Fund Series blanket.

The Oakerhater Chapel is dedicated to David Pendleton Oakerhater, a valiant Cheyenne warrior in his youth. Later, as a prisoner of war in the era westward expansion, he would become a deacon of the Episcopal Church from 1881-1931 and the first Native American saint. The congregation of St. Paul's Cathedral in Oklahoma City, OK, commissioned Preston Singletary to create a stained glass window featuring St. Oakerhater's signature glyph.

In 2003, Preston was commissioned by Emil Her-Many-Horses, curator of the new National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC, to create a version of his popular Raven Steals the Sun for the new museum.

Commissioned for the Seattle Art Museum. Tlingit house screens represent protective spirits that have become crests to various clans– i.e. the Raven, Killer Whale, Bear, etc. They protect the clan’s at.oow (sacred objects) and the people in the house. The house screen separated the chief and his family from the rest of the clan in their communal living. If there is a doorway on the screen, it usually is in the belly of the crest, the chief would ‘bring out’ the sacred objects as if emerging from the womb of the crest (Raven, Bear, etc.).