Fluid Life: Raven Skyriver Brings the Salish Sea to the Sterner Atrium Gallery
- SJIMA
- 1 day ago
- 5 min read
Updated: 19 minutes ago
There's something fitting about seeing Raven Skyriver's glass sculptures inside SJIMA's Sterner Atrium Gallery. With its two-story glass walls and glass roof flooding the space with natural light, the Atrium doesn't just display Skyriver's work — it changes it.
"Glass is something that reflects light and absorbs light and kind of emits light, depending on the situation," Skyriver said in his interview with SJIMA Trustee and Lead Docent Marney Reynolds. "Being in a glass kind of atrium like this is cool because people can come and see the work, and it'll change depending on what day you're here." Come back on a different day, in different light, and you'll see something new.
A Lopez Island Artist, Shaped by the Sea
Raven Skyriver was born in 1982 on Lopez Island, right here in the San Juan Islands, and grew up in a household where Northwest Coast-style carvers regularly visited to teach and practice their craft. He began blowing glass at sixteen, introduced to the medium by family friend and mentor Lark Dalton, who taught him to build glassblowing equipment and trained him in traditional Venetian technique.
As Skyriver described it to Reynolds, his earliest glasswork began simply as practice. "I started making fish pretty early on once I learned about sculptural glass," he said. "It really just began as a way to apply the techniques that I was seeing being done by the people that I learned from." That practice grew into a lifelong body of work rooted almost entirely in marine life.
His training deepened at Pilchuck Glass School, where in 2003 he joined the production team of master glass sculptor William Morris, working alongside Morris until his retirement in 2007 — a formative, roughly seven-year period that shaped his sculptural technique. In 2008 he traveled to Brazil to assist Lino Tagliapietra's team, working alongside one of the most respected production teams in contemporary glass. Today, Skyriver's own pieces are built the same collaborative way: a team of three to ten glassblowers sculpting each work together while the glass is molten. "Nothing I make, I make by myself," he told Reynolds. "Something like the shark or the sea turtle takes five to six people to help put it together." He compared the process to being in a band — different people, different skills, coming together to make something none of them could make alone.
Inside the Exhibition
Fluid Life: Glass Sculptures Inspired by the Sea fills the Sterner Atrium Gallery with sculptures that capture the movement, weight, and grace of creatures from the Salish Sea and beyond — seals, whales, a sea turtle, and a salmon shark among them. Skyriver works entirely in glass color, with no paint anywhere in the work. "All the colors are glass colors," he explained to Reynolds. "None of that can be removed, and it's completely archival in that regard." Layers of color bar, frit, and powder are built into the glass itself while it's molten, giving pieces like the exhibition's harbor seal their mottled, lifelike surface.
One of the exhibition's centerpieces, a salmon shark titled Cuts Through the Water, is a collaboration with fellow glass artist Preston Singletary, who contributed a Northwest Coast-style formline design sandblasted into the surface to reveal transparent color beneath. A green sea turtle in the exhibition uses a related sandblasting technique to render the organic pattern of a reptilian shell. Skyriver described the process to Reynolds as painstaking work: covering the piece in an adhesive rubber coating, drawing the design by hand, then cutting and peeling away the negative space before sandblasting reveals the pattern underneath.
Skyriver leans toward realism in his work, paying close attention to form and proportion, while still leaving himself room to play with color and imagined light. "I definitely lean towards realism," he told Reynolds. "I want it to look almost lifelike, or have a sense of motion to it." He described studying marine mammals and fish in depth, drawn to the way every creature — "from the most humble little limpet to the most incredible killer whale" — carries adaptations perfectly suited to its environment.
"My work is almost exclusively derived from the marine ecosystem. I attempt to place the creatures back in their environment by capturing the fluid nature in molten glass and transferring it into the perceived weightlessness of a swimming creature. I always strive to imbue the work with a hint of life." ~ Raven Skyriver
A Reminder We're Part of Something Larger
For Skyriver, this work carries a message beyond craft. "Humans think of themselves as separate from the natural world, but we are part of the natural world," he told Reynolds. "Conservation and really all of those things are just kind of selfish, because it's self-preservation, really. We owe it to ourselves to take care of the natural world, because it takes care of us."
Save the Date: Meet Raven Skyriver in Person
Join us for a free public artist talk with Raven Skyriver on Wednesday, September 9, 6–7 PM, at SJIMA. Hear directly from the artist about his work, his process, and his connection to the Salish Sea.
Want even closer access to moments like this? Join at the Directors Circle membership level and enjoy special benefits, including intimate pre-talk receptions with visiting artists. Learn more about membership →
Watch the Interview
Hear more from Raven Skyriver in his full interview with Marney Reynolds, recorded in the Sterner Atrium Gallery:
Plan Your Visit
Fluid Life: Glass Sculptures Inspired by the Sea is on view in the Sterner Atrium Gallery through September 14, 2026. SJIMA is located at 540 Spring Street in Friday Harbor and is open Thursday through Monday, 11 AM–5 PM. General admission is $10; free for members and visitors under 18. Pay-what-you-like every Monday.
SJIMA gratefully acknowledges the generous support that makes our Summer 2026 exhibitions possible: Honeywell Foundation, Mark Torrance Foundation, Town of Friday Harbor, San Juan County, San Juan Island Community Foundation, Barbara Von Gehr, Peg Gerlock, and Phil Johnson. In-kind support provided by Harbor Rental, Printonyx, Piece of Cake Painting, and Friday Harbor Suites.
