Artists in Conversation: Thaddeus Holownia and Karen Stentaford
Join artists Thaddeus Holownia and Karen Stentaford for a conversation organized in conjunction with the exhibition of a feather, on view at the Owens Art Gallery until 15 May.
of a feather considers how close relationships with the natural world strengthen our bonds with each other. The exhibition takes its title from a portfolio of photographs Thaddeus Holownia created after the death of his life partner, Gay Hansen (1954-2021), a gifted teacher, mentor, and ornithologist. These tender portraits of bird study skins—part of a collection she assembled—join a series of projects highlighting the couple’s creative partnership. They are presented alongside Karen Stentaford’s haunting landscape photographs, which she creates in patient collaboration with the environment, an approach that reflects Hansen’s influence on her work.
Thaddeus Holownia is a teacher, visual artist, letterpress printer, and publisher. In 2018, he retired from a forty-one-year career as a Professor of Art at Mount Allison University, where also served as Head of the Fine Arts Department. He is a Fulbright Fellow and an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts. He was named to the Order of New Brunswick in 2015. His work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions, including Shutter (Nelson Museum of Art, Nelson, BC), The Nature of Nature (Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax, NS), 24 Tree Studies for Henry David Thoreau (Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, NY), and of a feather (Corkin Gallery, Toronto, ON).
Karen Stentaford is an artist and educator living in Sackville, New Brunswick, within Mi’kma’ki. She specializes in large-format photography and the wet plate collodion process. Working in a variety of photographic-based media, her work explores place, belonging, and memory influenced by the Newfoundland landscape of her childhood. Stentaford received a MA in Photography from the Edinburgh College of Art, a BFA from Mount Allison University, and a BEd, Visual Arts Specialist, from NSCAD University and Mount Saint Vincent University. She is currently an Associate Professor in the Pierre Lassonde School of Fine Arts, Mount Allison University.
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Image: Karen Stentaford, Karlinn, 2023, archival pigment prints, courtesy of the artist.
