Spotlight on Lummi glass artist Raya Friday
“People of the Fireâ by Lummi Nation glass artist Raya Friday glows as if it has a life of its own.
The glass sculpture was recently installed in the lobby of the Lightcatcher building at the Whatcom Museum, and it commands attention as soon as you enter the room. With a series of flames standing between 3 to 6 feet tall, youâre first confronted with its size. Next, you notice the faces.
Raya used sand casting to create each flame, then hand-carved faces into the surface. She says the piece represents the spirituality of the elements. âThe thing I really wanted to explore in my own culture was this idea that everything in the natural world has its own energy, its own spirit,â she says.
She decided to explore that idea through the elements, starting with a smaller sculpture called âPeople of the Waterâ to see if her idea would work visually and functionally. Once she committed to creating a large-scale work of glass, she went all in. Â
âI mustered my courage, took out all the loans that I could and just set out to do this thing,â she recalls. âIt felt very much like swimming out into the ocean and seeing how far you could get without knowing if you could get back to shore.â
She credits Italian glass artist Narcissus Quagliata, whom she met at Pilchuck Glass School, with inspiring her to take on her project. His determination to see a multi-year project through prompted her to think of doing something bigger.
The process
It took Raya about eight months to create the 2,700-pound sculpture of glass and bronze set into a pedestal of stone. She completed the piece in 2007. Raya says the piece took a small village to create. âThere were a lot of meals for friends, six-packs of beer,â she recalls.
Raya was involved with each element, from mixing the bronze to cutting the stone to pouring the molten glass. âThe glass is like cold honey,â she says of how it slowly spreads into the casts. The flames get their color from frit, or concentrated crushed glass. This gives the unpolished sides a slightly rough appearance.
Her biggest challenge, she says, was cold working, or polishing, the surface of the glass. The size of the piece and high cost of equipment meant she couldnât have it professionally polished until years later.
Now, she tries to tweak the piece a bit each time she installs it. âItâs such a beast, so changes are small,” she says. “I canât make huge drastic changes.â
Her background
With nearly 25 years of glass experience under her belt, itâs no surprise Raya was interested in art at a young age. But her first love wasnât glass. It was ceramics. She loved working with glaze â the more the better to achieve that glossy look. Then, at 11, she discovered glass.
âYou take glass for granted, you donât think about it,â she says. âYou drink out of it every day and just live with it all the time. Then you actually see people manipulating it. I just had no idea.â
At 17 she started taking weekly classes but soon realized they werenât enough. Before long she was moving on to production glass work in Seattle. Seven years later, she left for New York to continue her education at Alfred University. It was in New York that âPeople of the Fireâ was born.
Recently, Raya was involved in the Tacoma Museum of Glass exhibition âTranslations: An Exploration of Glass by Northwest Native Carvers and Weavers.â
Now, she’s turning her attention to pursuing studies in art conservation for indigenous art. âItâs important that we be stewards of our culture,â she says.
âPeople of the Fireâ by Raya Friday will be on display in the Lightcatcher lobby through early October. The work is the first in our “In the Spirit of the People: Native Contemporary Artists” series.
