About

An exhausted pallet, a rusty washer, a trumpet bell long since retired from the bandstand. They all get a fresh gig together giving light and hopefully smiles to someone. Maybe you. - LION

CROW is also known as Calan Ree. Calan creates contemporary ceramic and mixed media figurative sculpture. Clay is her first true love, so even when working in bone or metal, there is more often than not ceramic binding the elements together. She finds the natural world just as intriguing as the folk lore that tries to explain it. Her work is figurative in nature and often expresses the hidden spirit that resides within the subject, be it human, myth or mushroom. Calan is on the design and surface treatment side of CROW & LION. She is also a master of sticky joinery. If it needs glue or plumber's epoxy or a wad of bubble gum, Calan is your girl.

LION is also known as Jim Morey. Jim is probably best known for his music. He has played trumpet since he was 8 years old. By 16, he was being mentored by legendary Jazz trombone player Buster Cooper. Jim has scored a film playing solo trumpet (LOREN CASS) and has played trumpet for a wide range of artists. He has his own band the Jim Morey Band and plays regularly with LoungeCat.

In addition to music, Jim is passionate about building. He has an unquenchable thirst for learning new building skills and has taught himself metal fabrication, welding, woodwork, wood turning, casting, etc. Jim is drawn to rusty metal, things that spin, patterns and organic forms. He is the builder, the problem solver and is an important part of the design process at CROW & LION.

The CROW & LION story...it's kinda romantic...

Jim and Calan met and fell in love back in Oct 2007. The two would often sip wine (or coffee if it wasn't wine time yet) and conjure all sorts of ideas...(parades, plays, puppet shows, products, infomercials). Much of what they imagined was a bit silly or mad, or just good for a laugh but some of it wasn't half bad. One evening, Calan had a very strong sense that the two would seriously collaborate in the future. She could sort of see a website, not what they were making or advertising, but the name, the name she was certain of...it was CROW & LION. She ran it by Jim and the two agreed that they would get the domain...just in case. Every year or so, it came up for renewal and Calan would re-register it, even though it seemed unlikely they would ever need it since they were so happy and busy with their individual projects.

Seven years later things took a dark turn. Jim had a budding metal works company that was growing rapidly, plus he was playing with 3 bands. Calan was focused on developing her art career and was balancing a job as a teaching artist to developmentally disabled adults (which she still has) as well as a side business as a graphic designer. Jim had been struggling with neck and back pain and some numbness that soon became more severe in his hands and legs and was coupled with some blurred vision in one eye that suddenly became extremely bad in both eyes. Needless to say, he sought help and eventually the official diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis came. Jim's vision never came back to normal and likely never will. He has low vision which means he is legally blind and the glasses he wears don't make things clear, they just sort of make the blurry stuff bigger. Despite the horror of finding out his vision loss was permanent and still experiencing significant numbness in his hands and leg, Jim decided the best thing to do would be to build a workshop out back. He and his step dad got to work.

With the workshop complete, Jim began working with wood. Up until this time, metal was his passion but welding with low vision seemed like a bad idea (although now, he might tell you otherwise). The first collaboration took place in the form of a coffee table which was built around a large industrial Hostess Twinkie baking tray..complete with an awesome Twinkie patina! The two found that working together on this piece for their home was very satisfying and felt excited about doing more. They designed a small lamp together and then figured out how to make the sketch a reality.  Once the lamp was created, they were hooked and CROW & LION was born. It was a slow process of just releasing small collections through local shops to finally feeling ready to launch this website which they did in Sept 2016. The future looks bright...well it's more like a warm amber glow...