Fusing Traditions: Transformations in Glass
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Fusing Traditions: Transformations in Glass
Preston Singletary, Raven Steals the Moon, 2002, blown and sand carved glass, 16 1/2 x 9 inches. Photograph by M. Lee Fatherree, Oakland, CA.



CORNING, N.Y.- The Rockwell Museum of Western Art will present, as one of four special exhibitions this year, Fusing Traditions: Transformations in Glass by Native American Artists through July 24, 2005. Complementing the Rockwell Museum's broad permanent collection of Native American art, this exhibition introduces the first generation of Native American studio glass artists. These eighteen artists fuse cultural heritage and individual creativity into dazzling new glass forms. This traveling exhibition features thirty-seven artworks and was organized by the Museum of Craft & Folk Art (MOCFA) in San Francisco, California.

Meet the Artists: Fusing Traditions recognizes an important artistic movement that began in the 1970s when Tony Jojola (Isleta Pueblo) first experimented in glass at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. Most recently, Preston Singletary (Tlingit) realized his dream when a cedar totem pole with glass and neon components was raised at the Pilchuck Glass School in celebration of the school's thirtieth anniversary. Influenced by their experience at the glass school, master carvers Joe David (Nuu-cha-nulth), John Hagen (Alaskan Native), and Wayne Price (Tlingit), began to experiment with glass in their subsequent art. This artistic exchange demonstrates the strength of the ties between the Pilchuck Glass School and the vigor of the Native American artists who have studied there. The movement continues, as both Jojola and Singletary teach Native students in Seattle and Taos. Two of Singletary's students are represented in the exhibition. The artwork of Robert Tannahill (Mohawk/Metis) and Brian Barber (Pawnee) have broken with the functional and decorative origins of glass to create enigmatic and authoritative forms based in their cultural traditions. Both artists are working in a cultural realm where the visible is not always legible to the uninitiated, yet even the culturally initiated will find these figures in glass startlingly new.

In Fusing Traditions, cultural art forms - beadwork, pottery, masks, spindle whorls, dance wands, and hats - are reinvigorated and re-imagined. Preston Singletary and Susan Point (Coast Salish) use the strong Northwest Coast imagery of their cultures to create revolutionary new glass forms in sand blasted and carved glass. Tony Jojola transforms pottery shapes into light-filled blown glass vessels. Drawing from American popular culture, Marcus Amerman's (Choctaw) glass-bead art relocates Native American art in the twenty-first century. The exhibition also includes the artwork of Larry Ahvakana (Inupiaq), Michael Carius (Siberian Y’upic), Conrad House (Navajo), Clarissa Hudson (Tlingit), Ramson Lomatewama (Hopi), Ed Archie NoiseCat (Salish), Marvin Oliver (Quinalt), Shaun Peterson (Salish), and C. S. Tarpley (Choctaw). The neon artwork of David Svenson, a non-Native American, is featured in this exhibition at the request of his students who honor him. He has been an influential teacher at the Pilchuck Glass School for many of the Native artists.










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