Dan Friday: Shaping Stories in Glass
- SJIMA
- Jul 25
- 3 min read
Featured in SJIMA’s Shapeshifters Exhibition | On view through September 15, 2025
The San Juan Islands Museum of Art (SJIMA) is proud to feature acclaimed Lummi Nation artist Dan Friday in Shapeshifters, a dynamic exhibition highlighting 32 Indigenous artists from the Pacific Northwest Coast. With a mastery of blown and sculpted glass, Friday fuses traditional Coast Salish forms and stories with contemporary techniques, creating work that is deeply rooted in heritage yet unmistakably modern.
Born in 1975 and raised in Washington’s Puget Sound region, Friday is a lifelong resident of the Pacific Northwest. A member of the Lummi Nation, he comes from a family rich in cultural and artistic legacy—his great-grandfather was the renowned totem carver Joseph R. Hillaire. Today, Friday honors that lineage by crafting vibrant glass pieces that echo the shapes, symbols, and spirit of Coast Salish tradition.
Friday’s path to glass art was an unexpected but transformative journey. As he shares in his artist statement and interview with SJIMA’s Marney Reynolds, he was once a rebellious youth working as a mechanic and tow truck driver. Everything changed when he walked into a friend’s glass studio at age 20.
“When I saw glassblowing for the first time,” Friday says, “it felt as though I grew an inch. A huge weight was lifted from my shoulders.”
That experience ignited a passion that led him to train at the Pilchuck Glass School and work alongside luminaries like Dale Chihuly, Paul Marioni, and Preston Singletary.
Friday describes glass as a “sculpture of light,” and he often leans into the medium’s natural beauty. Rather than striving for exact replication in his forms, he favors simplified silhouettes—graceful fish, powerful bears, ancestral totems—that evoke spirit over precision. “I try to capture the essence,” he explains, “not every exact fin.”
Several of Friday’s works on view at SJIMA exemplify this approach. His glass salmon, for instance, are created using a hybrid technique that joins a blown body with a solid glass head. The result is a visually striking and technically clever solution that allows the sculptures to retain scale without excessive weight.
Another standout is his interpretation of reef net anchors—stone forms historically used by Lummi fishers. Inspired by a historic photograph of his great-great-grandfather teaching settlers this method, Friday recreates these ancient tools in glass with a crackled surface that mimics the texture of aged stone.
To achieve this unique effect, Friday dips a powder-coated glass bubble into water, shocking the outer layer and causing it to crack. He then rubs dark pigment into the fissures, much like scrimshaw, creating a deeply tactile surface rich with narrative and memory. “Those anchors stand as witnesses,” he says, to the long, complex history of reef net fishing in the San Juan Islands and the Salish Sea.
While his primary medium remains glass, Friday is beginning to explore bronze, drawn to its permanence and outdoor durability. Yet at every turn in his artistic evolution, he remains committed to storytelling.
“Living as an artist may not be directly saving the world,” he reflects, “but perhaps we are saving ourselves—and hopefully, in the process, making the world a better place.”
🎥 Watch the Interview:
Don’t miss our 10-minute artist interview with Dan Friday, where he shares more about his creative process, techniques, and cultural inspirations.
Shapeshifters is on view at SJIMA through September 15, 2025, in the Nichols, North, and Atrium Galleries. Museum hours are Thursday through Monday, 11 AM – 5 PM.
SJIMA extends heartfelt thanks to the generous Shapeshifters Exhibition sponsors: Banner Bank, Barbara & Frank Fagan, Terry Lush & Linda Nelson, Alan & Lynn Weber/Roochvarg, Anonymous, Browne’s Home Center, Friday Harbor Suites, Harbor Rentals, Printonyx, and Terry Ogle Painting.
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