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Crow’s Nest Artists Featured at GlassFest

New York sculptor Tony Moretti and Michigan metalworker Gwen Quigley discovered each other and began collaborating in California, moving back to the Hammondsport area in the early 2000s to work together as the Crow’s Nest artists. The multi-talented pair named themselves for a favorite road in Hammondsport near their own off-grid nest. And, like crows, they can innately spot the usefulness of found objects, often working them into their work in unexpectedly beautiful ways.

“They are true artists,” says Dr. Connie Sullivan-Blum, executive director of the ARTS Council of the Southern Finger Lakes. “They approach every situation with an eye towards how to make it more beautiful, more impressive, and more expressive of something in the human spirit.” Using heat and flame, hammer and anvil, they bend, shape, and cut metal into sculptural works or smaller shapes that will become a larger piece.

The pair, who’ve appeared before at Gaffer District’s GlassFest, will be here again in 2023. For their live creation at the GlassFest in May in downtown Corning, they’re packing their collection of hammers, torches, anvils, and a portable forge, among other things. They’ll previously build a framework, and they plan to use some of their own bits and pieces along with metal objects dropped off at the ARTS Council for this project. Those watching their construction can suggest where a piece might go and then see the magic happen.

Several of their works adorn the grounds of Bully Hill Vineyards, including a recent sculpture in bronze and copper of the late Walter Taylor’s beloved goat, appropriately crushing a cola can—for reasons winery staff can explain. The variety of their work there also includes a bench, a cluster of tall, welcoming sunflowers, and an overlook constructed of found objects and old farm implements worked into a pictorial railing and paved with antique fragments of pottery discovered near the lakeshore. This last piece was the couple’s first collaboration when they came back to New York.

Like most of their work, these were commissioned. They also teach extensively, and sometimes combine sculpture with narrative instruction, as they will at GlassFest. Gwen says part of the fun of making commissioned pieces is the opportunity to listen to a third voice, that of the client who requested their work. “It’s magical that way,” Tony says. They also enjoy introducing kids to the arts of making things.

Contact them via Instagram or the ARTS Council of the Southern Finger Lakes.

~Karey Solomon