Preston Singletary: Echoes, Fire and Shadow, Museum of the Native America NY

Preston Singletary is on view at Museum of the Native American. The San Francisco born Tlingit artist creates native motifs in glass. The art wants to create something which is contemporary and has universal appeal, and
yet at the same time has a specific ethnicity. The artist believes that his work gets much of it's power from the
ethnic rootedness of it. I think that the artist's work would be very effective in conventional gallery venues but it is
especially effective in the Heyes center were there is so much older native art on view as well. Singletary creates a continuity with the older historic native art on display. The medium of glass is both modern and ancient requiring handcrafting yet lending itself to futuristic renderings. Rather than being carved into wood which can rot ( perhaps a preferable natural process) Singletary's art
lives in glass, which can only shatter. The trickster raven stealing the moon is sleek and the rattle that sings to itself is glassy. Impossible to use every day encased in glass without even having to be put in a museum, yet all the more valuable perhaps due to their state of suspended animation.