Bird carver/pin maker

Patricia Szostak has combined her love of wild birds with her artistic abilities in carving and painting wildfowl sculptures. She has studied with world champion wildfowl carvers and has won many awards at prestigious events such as the Atlantic Flyway Classic, The New England Wildfowl Carving and Art Exhibition, and the Ward World Wildfowl Carving Championship.

Patty's songbird sculptures are crafted from tupelo wood. Brass rods and sheeting are used to make feet and foliage. From concept to completion, a songbird sculpture may take up to 100 hours of work. Larger projects, such as life-size birds of prey, may require several hundred hours. A completed piece is anatomically accurate, richly textured and hand-painted to capture the essence of the species, then artistically presented in a natural setting.

As an outgrowth of her sculptural work, and for a change of pace, Patty also designs, carves and hand paints a variety of colorful wildfowl pins featured on this site. These are created in basswood and finished with acrylics for strength and durability. Although primitive in style, they are surprisingly detailed and require many steps from start to completion.