Preston Singletary is one of the preeminent contemporary Indigenous artists working today. Creating primarily in glass, Singletary has consistently pushed the boundaries of both scale and form to reimagine imagery and objects from his Tlingit culture to maximize their storytelling and visual potential. A major, public example of Singletary’s interplay with scale and innovation are the house screen and Tlingit warrior house posts within the clan house in the Walter Soboleff Building for Sealaska Heritage Institute in Juneau, Alaska. Singletary’s current traveling exhibition, Raven and the Box of Daylight, has received wide acclaim, having shown at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Washington, and the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC. It recently opened at the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art in Indianapolis, Indiana.

This open edition glass maskette from 2017 depicts the Tlingit moon, anthropomorphized as a human face encircled by a halo. The thickness, colour, and semi-opacity of the glass lend a glowing quality to the lunar imagery that enhances the overall effect. The moon is a central figure in the Tlingit creation story of Raven stealing the sun, moon, and stars from his grandfather and releasing them into the world.

Christopher W. Smith