Prayer Flags and a Tale of Longing

(Santa Barbara, CA): Simplemente Maria Press, 2020. Heebner, Mary. Octavo volume and strand of ten paper prayer flags. (22)ff., + 20ff. One of twenty copies, signed by the artist. Mary Heebner's flags bear her five invocations to a distressed planet, with one prayer for each element: fire, earth, air, water, and aether. Written in cursive sharply reproduced by photopolymer plates, the texts follow the format of traditional Tibetan prayer flags and are printed on Khadi paper paired with sheets of handmade pulp-painted paper. These alternate with folded Nepalese lokta paper, stamped with a lotus design on one side and ink-printed with elemental icons on the other. The two-sided strand of flags is then sewn on a length of bronze satin ribbon and housed in a sleeve of silk and ribbon. Alongside the flags is "A Tale of Longing," a wire-bound journal with hand-painted and foil-stamped covers. Likewise rendered in cursive reproduced by photopolymer plate, the journal's narrative follows Heebner's own 1993 journey to Sikkim, an Indian state near Bhutan, Tibet, and Nepal, where she visited Rumtek Monastery and observed a monk printing prayer flags from carved wooden blocks. The journal's scattered illustrations are hand-painted with the five colors representing each of the elements. The materials-together a profound rumination on human and environmental connection-are all housed with a paper tray in a beveled acrylic case. Very fine.