Preston Singletary Native American (Tlingit), born in 1963 Raven Steals the Moon, 2002 Blown red glass with black overlay having sandblasted design “My work connects ancient knowledge and Tlingit culture to glass and Modern art movements. Much of this work references animals from nature, or natural phenomena and human connection to the cosmos. This is almost always a driving force in the work. It straddles the natural materials in an extreme form of glass (silica) and the abstractions come from the experimentation of the glass making process. I enjoy letting Modernism, Primitivism and Surrealism influence my work, just as the Modernists absorbed and emulated Indigenous cultural art in different ways.” —Preston Singletary, 2022 Raven, a supernatural being who helped transform the visible world, clasps the moon, ready to release it into the sky to illuminate the earth. Like stories about Raven, transformation has been part of Tlingit art since time immemorial. Singletary works with blown and sandblasted glass —mediums that can fluidly transform from one shape to another— to interpret the histories, designs, and ecological knowledge of his community. Gift of Dale and Doug Anderson and Preston Singletary, 2003 2003.350