Oral History Interview with Preston Singletary, 2011 March 23-24
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Oral history interview with Preston Singletary, 2011 March 23-24 Funding for this interview was provided by the Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America. Contact Information Reference Department Archives of American Art Smithsonian Institution Washington. D.C. 20560 www.aaa.si.edu/askus Transcript Preface The following oral history transcript is the result of a recorded interview with Preston Singletary on March 23 and 24, 2011. The interview took place in Seattle, and was conducted by Mary Savig for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. This interview is part of the Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America. Preston Singletary has reviewed the transcript and has made corrections and emendations. The reader should bear in mind that they are reading a transcript of spoken, rather than written prose. Interview MARY SAVIG: This is Mary Savig interviewing Preston Singletary at Preston's studio in Seattle. It is March 23, 2011, and this interview is for the Archives of American Art, the Smithsonian Institution. And we are on disc number one. So we're going to start out nice and easy with some basic questions. When and where were you born? PRESTON SINGLETARY: I was born in San Francisco August 9, 1963. MS. SAVIG: And then you moved to Seattle soon after? MR. SINGLETARY: Yeah, actually, the story goes my parents were both from the Seattle area, but they moved down to San Francisco, trying it out for size. And my birth certificate says that my father was a — worked for Maytag. And so anyways, after I was born, I think before I was a month old, they moved back to Seattle. So, you know, for all intents and purposes, I moved—I'm from Seattle, yeah. MS. SAVIG: Yeah. Did you have a lot of family in Seattle? Is that why they moved back? MR. SINGLETARY: Yeah, all of my family is in Seattle or—well, yeah, most of my immediate family is in Seattle. MS. SAVIG: Can you talk about your parents a little bit, just what they did. MR. SINGLETARY: Yeah, my father was born in Ryderwood, Washington, and he and my mother got together— let's see. I think my father was 23 when I was born. My mother was 19. And they got married, and let's see. My mother is half Tlinglit and half Filipino. My mother—my grandmother was full blooded Tlinglit, but because of the association with my great grandmother having remarried a Filipino man—there's a lot of Filipinos in our, you know, community with friends and family. And so my grandmother married a Filipino man who was in the Navy, and his name was John Abada, A-b-a-d-a. And so my mother has two sisters. And so my grandfather, I do remember him, but he was on—you know, in the Service, so he was gone for extended periods of time. And they eventually separated, and my grandfather moved back to the Philippines. And then my grandmother died when she was about 71. And so my mother, she—and my father were married till I was about 15, and at that time—I have a younger sister named Rachel, and she was about nine years younger than me. And so when I was 15, that would put her, you know, about—what is it, six? Yeah, six years old or so. MS. SAVIG: Yeah. MR. SINGLETARY: And so she was—and my mother—well, I lived with my mother after my parents were divorced. And let's see, yeah. MS. SAVIG: So you never have been to the Philippines or explored that part of your heritage? MR. SINGLETARY: Not specifically, no. Other than eating Filipino food which is one thing that we did a lot, chicken adobo and lumpia and those type of things, we—it was the Tlingit side really that was more —I guess it spoke to me the loudest and in regards to what I do today with my art. MS. SAVIG: Did your mom or dad do anything artistic around the house or encourage you to do a lot of art? MR. SINGLETARY: Yeah, as a child, I was—I remember drawing a lot but not really—you know, dabbling in it. My mother and father were both very creative people. My mother was always doing handicrafts and, you know, doing macramé in the '70s was a big thing. And she used to sew a lot, and she would crochet and knit. She was very creative and just kind of dabbling in things that you might find in homemaking magazines and that type of thing. MS. SAVIG: Did you watch her? MR. SINGLETARY: Yeah, she used to get me involved a little bit in different projects, and, you know, around the holidays we'd be making things. And my father, though, was also quite creative. He would dabble in lots of different things such as oil painting and, you know, soapstone carving. And, you know, I remember him always very—dabbling in he used to try to make rings and make different things. He might just try his hand at any given thing. And so, you know, he used to write poetry a lot. My father is very well read. I'd say he's very intelligent because he reads so much, and he was also a great outdoorsman. You know, one of his things is fishing, which I never really caught the fishing bug because I never—I just never—I didn't like it. I mean, my father is very serious about fishing, and we went out. You know, we got up really early in the morning, got out, and it was cold. And, you know, I guess he never possessed the ability to impart that upon me or make me feel comfortable enough. You know, you think he might have a thermos of hot chocolate or something, but I never really did get into doing that. But I used to go hiking a lot with him and even snow climbing. At the time, he was really into rock climbing, and pretty much anything that you could, he tried to do. MS. SAVIG: So he kind of imbued in you a sense of the outdoors and nature? MR. SINGLETARY: Yeah, he did, although I think I was much more comfortable with music. I started playing music when I was about 11. I took piano lessons at first. I remember being very attracted to—I remember sitting in front of a piano one time at a friend of my parents' house and just, you know, tinkering on the piano and figuring out that I could create these little melodies. And I sat there trying to hammer out the melody for "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing." [1971] MS. SAVIG: You figured it out on your own? MR. SINGLETARY: And just by touching the notes and something that was very simple and easy to try. And then so my parents got me going with piano lessons, and I took off on that for quite a while. And I did learn how to read music and play a few sort of complicated compositions. And Scott Joplin was one of the things that—I really at that time, I wanted to be like a ragtime piano player. That's what attracted me to music. And a little later, I guess I shifted to guitar in high school. So talk about in relationship to what my father's interests were, I was more comfortable sitting in the basement playing my guitar, playing music. MS. SAVIG: Right, you were a typical Seattle teenager. MR. SINGLETARY: Yeah. MS. SAVIG: Did you continue to do piano for— MR. SINGLETARY: Well, I continued in piano through high school, but I never really got extremely proficient with it. I was more of a trained—I had a really good ear. I could hear. And then when I'd look at the notes on the paper, I could sort of see, okay, well, that's where the chords are and that's where my fingers go. And then through memory, I could sort of mimic the riff and the piano style. And when I figured out a few things, I never really got completely comfortable with reading music. So as a trained musician, I had to say I was much more picking it up by ear, yeah. MS. SAVIG: That's fascinating. I took piano for five years, and I never got it. It was always a battle. I just have the rhythm, and I certainly couldn't hear anything and play it back. Do you think glass is parallel to music, where you can imagine it in your head and then— MR. SINGLETARY: Well, with the glass blowing for me, I would say was, you know—the fact be told, I guess I had dropped out of high school or I didn't have enough credits to graduate. And, you know, in high school, honestly, I took high school for what it was. I was playing guitar, and I was playing piano. And I had a piano class, and then I dropped my math. And I'd take two piano classes because the piano teacher loved me. I would be able to play these kind of flashy compositions, and that was great for the piano recital, made him look probably pretty good, Mr. Doyle, who was my piano teacher in high school, Patrick Doyle. MS. SAVIG: He was really supportive of you? MR.