Overview

Flaco, the eagle-owl liberated from his enclosure at the Central Park Zoo, captivated the city. He remained in Central Park for nine months living on his own, eventually also exploring nearby buildings and neighborhoods in Manhattan. In February 2024, one year after his escape, Flaco died after colliding with a building on the Upper West Side. Poet Leonard Schwartz and artist Heide Hatry explore the implications of the Eurasian eagle-owl's sojourn.

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9781963908541

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Reviews

This remarkable encounter between a people and a bird, and between a poet and a visual artist, is also a beautiful ode to New York City. It is filled with surprising insights and startling cultural references. All in all, it makes for a perfect gift to give a lover of nature, or a spiritual treasure to hold onto and cherish. Phillip Lopate Books are spaces of memory, an idea poignantly embodied in the book-based assemblages that Heide Hatry has set in dialogue with Leonard Schwartz's suite of poems. Hatry's cut, collaged, vividly staged scenes, part reliquary and part theatrical vignette, demonstrate exquisitely and deliberately the evidential and affective power of materials, and celebrate and preserve the spirit of Flaco the beloved Eagle Owl, whose symbolic freedom captivated New York. Their rich archaeology connects Flaco with an intertextual field of associations and references through which the artist invokes her personal memory of a shared cultural experience. Joanna Drucker, author of The Century of Artist's Books and The Book as Art In this exceedingly beautiful work, Schwartz and Hatry have bequeathed to us a portrait of Flaco, the Eurasian eagle-owl-a companion for derelict times that we did not know we needed. Woven from the winged creature's debris, the book tells a tragic tale; in Flaco's inscrutable gaze, we glimpse our own refracted through the ash and bone of the eagle-owl's remaindered substance. In this majestic and somber portrait of a homely fate, Schwartz and Hatry have composed a fable for the permanent apocalypse which is our now. Alexi Kukuljevic, author of Liquidation World: On the Art of Living Absently (MIT University Press) Hatry's evocative images add an intense emotional dimension to this absorbing series of meditations on the life and (imagined) experience of the celebrated Eagle Owl. Errol Fuller, author of Extinct Birds, Lost Animals, and Voodoo Salon Heide Hatry and Flaco the Owl, what a perfect couple. Hatry has also escaped from her artworld cage and what better tribute to nature's brave non-human souls than her witty and heartfelt collages. Lucy R. Lippard, art critic, activist, curator, and writer of 26 books

Author Information

Leonard Schwartz is the author of numerous books of poetry, including, most recently, Actualities I: Transparent, to the Stone, Actualities II and III: Two Burned Hotels, and Actualities IV/V Comic Earth (2021, 2022, 2023, Goats & Compasses). His three books with artist Simon Carr, Horse on Paper, Not a Snake and Salamander: A Bestiary (Chax Press, 2017), are also out and about. Heide Hatry is a NYC-based German artist, former rare bookseller, and best known for her work employing animal parts or other discarded, disdained, or ""taboo"" materials. She has curated numerous exhibitions and has shown her work at museums and galleries all over the world. She has produced more than 200 artist's books, edited dozens of art catalogues, and four of her larger projects (Skin, Heads and Tales, Not a Rose, and Icons in Ash) have been documented in monographic books.

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