Comments on the book: Blurbs

“Natural science is a left-brain activity and nature art is a right-brain activity, or so I’ve always thought. No longer. ‘Humans, Nature, and Birds’This book masterfully combines both disciplines into a whole new category of ‘Science Art.’ It demonstrates how art connects us to nature, advances science, and helps protect our environment. I’ll never look at nature art the same way again."
—John Flicker, President, National Audubon Society

“Reading this book is like having a friend with a key to the natural history art museum. The authors take us on an excursion, conveying palpable delight in works of art from across the spectrum of time and around the world.”
—Julie Zickefoose, artist and author of Letters from Eden

“Birds were there—on cave walls and rock shelters thirty millennia ago, on Egyptian tombs, in Joseph Wright’s painting from the dawn of the Industrial Age, in Roger Tory Peterson’s first biodiversity guide, and today, where art is the only record of many species now gone forever. Wheye and Kennedy assemble the ultimate exhibition of bird art, with detailed notes that say so much about our world and our view of it.”
—Stuart Pimm, Doris Duke Professor of Conservation Ecology, Duke University

“A half-century ago, George M. Sutton’s essay ‘Is Bird-art Art?’ began the rehabilitation of avian art in fine art circles. ‘Humans, Nature, and Birds,’ in an elegant survey of the grand interplay of bird art and ornithology, makes the definitive case. All art teachers should read it.”
—H. Douglas Pratt, Research Curator of Birds, North Carolina State Museum of Natural Sciences

“Just as a glass of a fine wine is meant to be enjoyed sip by sip, this book will be enjoyed page by page.  Its thought-provoking images depict our age-old fascination with birds, ranging from the owl traced 30,000 years ago in Chauvet Cave, to the goshawk attacking grouse in a dramatic modern painting.”
—Jared Diamond, Professor of Geography at UCLA and author of the Pulitzer-prize-winning book Guns, Germs, and Steel

“…tells a powerful and well-documented story of the interconnectedness of creative expression and birds, building a sound case for recognizing Science Art as a genre.”
—Kathy Kelsey Foley, Director, Woodson Art Museum

"“…beautifully examines where science and art overlap through the common territory of observation—and the human urge to both make sense of and embrace the great unknown.”
—James Prosek, painter and author

Others:

“The authors’ use of birds as a binding motif gives their book appeal and coherence, and the selection of art is eclectic and apt.”
—Timothy Goldsmith, Yale University

The authors take us in a new direction-an edgy new direction and force us to consider broadly the relation between art and science."
—Alan Brush, University of Connecticut

© 2008 Darryl Wheye and Donald Kennedy