of a feather combines the strengths of science and art
of a feather is the third book in a trilogy that includes Ova Aves and Icarus, Falling of Birds. This latest collaboration between internationally renowned photographer Thaddeus Holownia and the poet and naturalist Harry Thurston is a tribute to the lifelong work of Thaddeus’s late partner Gay Hansen, who was a lecturer and lab instructor in biology at Mount Allison University for 39 years.
Gay’s great passion was Ornithology. “I think that it is essential to educate people about birds—they are extremely important in ecological, environmental, cultural and recreational realms,” she once wrote. “Ornithology is one of the few fields of Biology where citizen science makes significant contributions.”
The poems and photographs have their source in Hansen’s study mounts now housed in the Gay Hansen Ornithology Laboratory. They demonstrate Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson’s belief that “neither science nor the arts can be complete without combining their separate strengths,” in their search to reveal a common truth.
“Besides the mounts and the photographs themselves, I plumbed literary and scientific literature on birds and my own daily experience of the species profiled,” says Thurston. “Each of the poems is an intimate address to the bird in question, and overall what I wanted to convey was their integrity as individuals and their collective beauty.”
The book was launched at the Owens Art Gallery in Sackville, New Brunswick, on May 10th, 2024.
