Object Details
- Exhibition Label
- Safe Journey is based on traditional storage boxes of Northwest Native communities, sometimes used as burial boxes. This Spirit Box is a tribute to the artist’s father, who passed away in 2019. The killer whale theme identifies Preston Singletary’s clan and symbolizes a transition from the physical world to the spirit realm. Two orb lights represent the spirits of his father and grandfather and create the effect that the box, as Singletary describes, “contains universes.”
- Drawing on his Tlingit heritage, Singletary reimagines ancient themes, forms, and designs traditionally made in materials like cedar, shell, and bone in the contemporary medium of glass. Here, Singletary carved and sandblasted the designs onto kiln-cast panels of glass.
- This Present Moment: Crafting a Better World, 2022
- Data Source
- Smithsonian American Art Museum
- Artist
- Preston Singletary, born San Francisco, CA 1963
- Date
- 2021
- Credit Line
- Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the James Renwick Alliance in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Renwick Gallery and the 40th anniversary of the alliance, and museum purchase through the Kenneth R. Trapp Acquisition Fund
- Copyright
- © 2021, Preston Singletary
- Medium
- cast and sand-carved glass on wooden pedestal
- Dimensions
- chest:14 7/8 x 27 1/8 x 16 3/8 in. lid: 3 7/8 x 27 1/2 x 16 7/8 in. pedestal: 45 5/8 x 28 3/8 x 17 1/2 in.
- Type
- (not assigned)
- Crafts
