Fusing Traditions exhibition

FUSING TRADITIONS Transformations in Glass by Native American Artists

May 6 - July 24, 2005

You don't have anything if you don't have the stories. - Leslie Marmon Silko

Fusing Traditions: Transformations in Glass by Native American Artists features the work of eighteen artists who fuse cultural heritage and individual creativity in dazzling new glass forms that expand the language of American art. This first generation of Indian artists working in glass came to the medium one by one. Together they comprise a powerful artistic movement rooted in the tradition and place of their Native cultures. As they experimented with the properties of glass - its ability to assume any form, its translucence, its permanence - each one brought something new to the medium's formal language. Together they have transformed the genre of glass art. This exhibition, organized by the Museum of Craft & Folk Art in San Francisco, brings the work of these artists together for the first time.

The most mature of these artists have been working in glass for more than twenty years, yet this exhibition marks the first time that their art has been exhibited together. As a group they are reinvigorating and re-imagining cultural art forms - beadwork, pottery, masks, spindle whorls, and dance wands. Inspired by the pottery and basket shapes of the Southwest, Tony Jojola (Isleta Pueblo) and Ramson Lomatewama (Hopi) create light-filled blown glass vessels. Jojola also invokes his personal past when he uses his grandfather's jewelry-making tools to embellish his vessels. Conrad House's (Navajo) singular vision inspires art for new traditions and rituals, like that of C. S. Tarpley (Choctaw/Chickasaw), who consciously fuses many cultures to create his vessels, and Marcus Amerman (Choctaw), who relocates American Indian beadwork in the twenty-first century by layering images of American popular culture. Preston Singletary (Tlingit), Susan Point (Coast Salish), Ed Archie NoiseCat (Salish), Shaun Peterson (Salish), Marvin Oliver (Quinalt/Isleta Pueblo), and Clarissa Hudson (Tlingit) have adapted the iconic Northwest Coast imagery to create revolutionary glass forms that visualize old stories from their cultures. Michael Carius (Siberian Y'upic) imagines a figure from his Emperor Goose Clan and Larry Ahvakana (Inupiaq) recreates an icy Arctic landscape in glass. Each artist opens a window on his or her personal experience and cultural past.

Glass is a fluid medium that by its nature can fuse and meld disparate ideas, colors, and forms. Furthermore, the collaborative nature of the hot glass process invigorates the art form as artists assist each other to bring personal visions to life. In the summer of 2001, David Svenson (the sole non-Native American included in this exhibition) and Preston Singletary realized their dreams 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 Pilchuck, Master carvers Joe David (Nuu-Chah-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 Native American artists who have studied there. The movement continues, as both Jojola and Singletary teach Native students in Taos and Seattle. Two of Singletary's students, Robert Tannahill (Mohawk/Metís) 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 in which the visible is not always legible to the uninitiated; yet even the culturally initiated will find these figures in glass startlingly new. The spiritual and artistic power of this first generation of Native American glass artists is manifest in the vigor of the second generation.

The artwork presented in this exhibition is alive with relationships among generations, individuals, and cultures. Each work of art enunciates the power of cultural heritage. Equally powerful is the community built in the process of creating this art. Articulating a fusion of culture and community, these artists are shaping a new language of American art.

- Carolyn Kastner and Roslyn Tunis, co-curators

Fusing Traditions: Transformations in Glass was organized by the Museum of Craft & Folk Art, San Francisco, California - www.MOCFA.org. This exhibition has been generously supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass, and Dorothy and George Saxe.