Native glass art emerged in the 1970s with the coming together of two movements - the contemporary Native American arts movement, championed by Lloyd Kiva New, director of the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), and the studio glass art movement, founded by American glass artists such as Dale Chihuly, who started several of the early teaching programs and became its most famous practitioner. The first Native artists to embrace glass art were associated with IAIA in Santa Fe and/or the Pilchuck Glass School in Washington State. These institutions attracted to the medium Indian artists primarily from the Southwest and the Northwest coast. Clearly Indigenous tells the story of how glass art came to Indian Country as an introduction to an exploration of the extraordinary glass art that has been created over the past forty-five years by American Indian and First Nations glass blowers and multimedia artists. Whether reinterpreting traditional stories and designs or articulating contemporary issues, Native glass artists have created a rich body of work melding the aesthetics and properties inherent in glass art with their respective cultural knowledge.
By Letitia Chambers
Hardcover: 240 pages
Dimensions: 10 x 1 x 11 inches