Transcript

Native glass art | Preston Singletary | TEDxRainier

[Music] Preston single KAG uh that's a brief introduction in the clink language uh he said uh my name is Preston single ter I come from the kanton Clan uh from the kinket tribe in Alaska and uh my clinet name is Coen and I live in Seattle Preston it's wonderful to be on stage with you and thank you for the opportunity to have a conversation with you thank you you have said that native art has always been excluded from the Fine Art world if you can talk a little bit about that and how is your art and your approach to your craft perhaps changing that scenario I always say that uh the native art has been excluded from the the Fine Art world and it's been kept in this cultural Corral so to speak and it uh there are people that like to determine what is contemporary what is traditional and where it fits in and so I feel like the work that I'm doing is changing that you know with the GL growing up in Seattle uh among the glass tribe um I was raised here in Seattle and and started working on glass blowing teams about 1982 and uh the first exploration that I found when I was trying to connect my uh uh art glass art with the cultural art was this hat form typically made out of spruce root or cedar bark and when I sand blasted some of the clink designs into the piece um I had discovery that uh this Shadow effect that came through the the piece when I put it on a pedestal and um to me it was like a spirit that was being revealed to me and I like to think of it today as uh like kind of a bit of a kinetic sculpture that interacts with the light well two two things come to mind first of all where where is that hat now and and and this experience that you had with it it sounded like it was a Eureka moment uh and I I'm curious about how that manifested in you as an artist well the first pieces I produced was they were in about 19 89 and I sent them up to Alaska the first piece sold to uh the Museum of uh history and art in Anchorage and uh the other one disappeared I don't know what happened to it it's out there somewhere in the world but it never came back to me so someone's enjoying it right now someone is um so I spent a lot of time looking at um cultural objects now this is a traditional bowl that was made so I'm looking at these objects and then creating glass sculptures that um that reflect the older uh pieces so a lot of these things were uh perhaps you know utilitarian or had a a a uh a place within the the culture and and almost everything was uh ornamented with design work and so a lot of these things were used for stage craft for storytelling um reiterating the stories for the Clans um and uh and also um some of them had maybe like a a deeper uh spirit rual connection for Ceremony or a ritual uh healing rituals uh by a shaman and so that's those are the things that uh inspire me you know the connection of uh animal spirits to humans and communicating U elements of the the natural world um so a lot of these things are uh explorations of different um forms and techniques that I could employ a lot of it using the sand blasting technique but to jump forward just a little bit what I'm doing now I'm I'm kind of trying to integrate more of a modernist sensibility so the modernists were the ones that uh were reflecting on primitive cultures so-called primitive cultures uh and so these pieces this little group of pieces to me reflect a bit of a modernist sensibility so I'm trying to turn the tables on the modernist so to speak and this is all glass that we're looking at right yeah this is all mostly blown glass blown and sculpted in different ways your work with Elders has been significant and so critical in the development of your art take us through that Journey um in the summer of 2000 I met uh a man named Joe David who became one of my most important mentors he was uh uh from the new chanol tribe from the west coast of Vancouver Island but he's a master Carver and was largely responsible for the Resurgence of northwest coast art and you know coming back into um awareness and and attention and we were up at the pilchu school and uh he wanted to create a ceremonial uh sweat lodge up on the hill and offer it to the all of us who were up there and he um explained that it was a suffering and sacrifice ceremony and that you know he would uh show us this uh this experience and for me I was really uh rather uh apprehensive because I didn't know but I participated with the uh four sweats and after that he adopted me and he shared his name with me he gave me his name which was Kaka and chath which means transforming killer whale which is really significant because on the northwest coast you could receive names throughout your lifetime which would denote a change or uh a growth or if you were to assume a new responsibility such as being a house leader um then you might receive an ancestral name you refer to the pilchu glass school and the pilchu totem Paul whole project was a defining project for you on many levels yeah the uh um one of the first teachers that I met was uh David senson here who helps me with some carving projects um since I don't carve wood I work exclusively in glass so um he had the idea to uh bring uh this uh effort together we would honor the founders of the pilchu glass School uh John halberg Annie halberg did El Chuli um so we took that collaborative spirit that we you know learned as glass blowers and we um brought in these Alaskan Carvers from Hayes Alaska and they carved this totem pole we created a a class uh surrounding the finishing and the completion of the pole and um created these totemic uh elements that were fabricated in glass and then um then they were inlaid into the pole and um so you know John halberg was a passionate northwest coast native art collector he was he had repatriated some materials to the the tribe up tribes up in Alaska and so he was adopted given a clinet name so we saw it very befitting to make this uh totem pole for him uh we invited some of the elders from Alaska to come down and help us with the installation ceremony and uh so here we have a little bit of an example of we back lit those um uh glass elements with neon tubes and here you can see Dale chul's face um so instead of the patch you know we have you know this this slash across the uh the eye which you know represents Dale's vision of Glass Vision of the the school and he's holding the The Raven which you know in the mythological stories is Raven brings the light to the world so it's like Dale juli brought the idea of pilchu to the world you've uh spoken about the spirit spiritual path you're on where are you on that Journey well when I was up um on the campus when you know that that project was really a right of passage for me it was uh it was something that you know while I was there I had this flash of deja vu which just really impacted me um made me feel as though I was I'd been there before and for me it was kind of like a genetic memory that I feel we all possess and I feel like that that's something something that uh I think in in terms of clink culture uh the ancestors U that we you know pay honor to uh through the generations through totem poles and what have you this is my great grandmother here uh in the center who uh she relocated from Alaska um uh in the 20s to Seattle and that's how we all ended up in the Seattle area she lived to be over a hundred years old and so she was quite a a figure in my family and you know one of the last uh conversations I had with my own grandmother her daughter was that if anybody were to look at her life's work then you'd have to look at her grandchildren so today I'm filled with a tremendous sense of purpose you know in the work that I do a lot of your work lately has been Monumental literally and figuratively show us what that means to you and the impact of this Monumental work uh you know the the northwest coast cultures with their sense of uh of pageantry you know and and Grand scale and as I mentioned like the the reflection of the ancestors through a generational um you know process and I feel like I'm a part of that lineage matrilineal society and um this is one of the largest pieces I did uh a couple years ago it's at the Seattle Art Museum it's a killer whale screen and that is um uh anyway that's my my uh my Crest symbol that represents our family these are some larger pieces that I did these house posts that are about 500 lbs each um and this was you know for the Museum of Glass and a much larger screen that represents the eagle which is the uh the side of the tribe where my family comes from um and then of course getting into more of um you know International collaboration I started to work in the Czech Republic uh where we pioneering uh large scale glass casting um so the uh uh this is an example of a story of my great-grandmother here in this totem pole uh that uh she had a pet grizzly bear as a child so you can see the grizzly bear cub on the top you can see the my great grandmother um and so that's what totem poles do is they tell a story and speaking of stories I'm I'm fascinated by your story and something I learned about you that is when you were younger you had dreams of being an artist of course that's not surprising but they were dreams of being a Performing Artist dreams of being a professional musician in fact you would go on to create glass heart to support what you were hoping uh was going to be your musical career right right so I always say that I'm uh kind of a musician trapped in the body of a glass blower and it's true when I started blowing glass in the beginning I thought well now I can afford to you know do my passion which was music and so I have this band um I spent a lot of time through the 90s playing music and not really getting anywhere with it but uh more recently I thought I would in integrate my cultural uh connection with Native performers and have this group called little big band and uh it's a Native American funk band because there well there was never one before so I figured that there needed to be one why not um and because for me you know funk music really embodies the best of lots of genres you know Jazz Rock Soul gospel um and rock so um we have a little snippet we were going to play uh if we could dang [Music] it oh [Music] oh so that was uh I had the opportunity to work with a pretty famous musician named Bernie warell who actually played with Parliament Funkadelic if any of you all knew that one from the 70s and 80s and so in any case that was a an example of using traditional kinket songs music and then creating these Funk Jazz improvisations around that well in the short time I've known you which is one week uh I I know you have so much gratitude you're grateful to your collaborators and and and your mentors and the people who believed in you that have given you so much inspiration for the work you do yeah uh you know I I spent a lot of time working with uh collaboratively with other artists and so and my way that's sort of giving back to the community and and showing that glass actually has the ability to you uh be utilized in different ways and cre bring a new dimension to indigenous art so this is a a variety of uh collaborations that I've done with different artists from around the country um you know from the southwest and also um the Hawaiian and the the Maui culture so these are all glass blown pieces that are reflective of other pe people's culture um this was the mai version here this was something that um uh conjoining the the Jade uh traditional Jade and then also conjoining the stories and I have a lot of I learn a lot through working with other indigenous artists and how they approach their culture and so I always say that you know the uh the materials that we use for uh indigenous art are becoming increasingly rare such as the to to poles for the or the cedar logs for the totem poles and The Dugout canoes and so you'll start to see new materials being utilized by artists to keep you know the stories and the symbols alive and uh so that's uh you know and then the fact that we are all connected in this uh this Continuum there was a mai proverb that was I learned and that is my accomplishments are not mine alone but those of many president thank you for sharing with us your beautiful work and your wisdom thank you thank you