PRAYER FLAGS & A TALE OF LONGING

Santa Barbara, CA: Simplemente Maria Press, 2020. flags sewn together with ribbon, journal spiral bound, housed in a handmade paper covering, loosely inserted into a acrylic slipcase. Simplemente Maria Press. large square 4to. flags sewn together with ribbon, journal spiral bound, housed in a handmade paper covering, loosely inserted into a acrylic slipcase. 22 pages. Invocations to a distressed planet in the form of prayers to EARTH. AIR. FIRE. WATER. AETHER. Limited to only numbered 20 copies signed by the artist, Mary Heebner. Instructions on handling loosely inserted. Fine in fine polished, beveled acrylic sleeve.



Invocations of prayers to the environment, hand-written in cursive, are based upon the format of traditional Tibetan prayer flags. The 5 prayers on Khadi paper are paired with sheets of handmade pulp-painted paper. They alternate with folded Nepalese lokta paper, stamped with a lotus design on one side and on the opposite side, ink-printed with icons representing the 5 elements. This two-sided strand of flags is sewn on a length of bronze satin ribbon.



The folded flag comes in a be-ribboned white cotton pouch. A Tale of Longing, the wiro-bound 22 page journal, with hand-painted and foil-stamped covers, rests beneath in a paper enclosure. The Tale, also written in cursive, and also printed letterpress from photopolymer plates, recalls a visit to a monk printing prayer flags from carved wooden blocks at Rumtek Monastery in Sikkim, India. Every Prayer Flag and all pages of the Tale of Longing are hand-painted with the 5 colors of each of the elements. Both books are placed in a polished, beveled acrylic sleeve.



The flags, sewn on satin ribbon, come folded in a cotton pouch. The 5 prayers may be read page by page or may be displayed as a ten panel double-sided strand hung by the 15' ribbon.



The story was derived from journal notes that the artist took in 1993 during an assignment to Sikkim, an Indian state bordering Bhutan, Tibet, and Nepal, and especially about a visit that was made to Rumtek Monastery. Upon revisiting these notes in 2019, Heebner realized they told a tale of longing. What are we longing for when we travel, when we encounter another's culture and ways of being in the world? What do we expect from the experience, and why?



The journey consisted of four individuals: a writer, a photographer, an artist, and a copy, traveling with two young Tibetans, Pema and Tempa, who are from Sikkim, India. They are our guides and translators as we venture from Gangtok, the state's capital, all the way to norther Sikkim ... The six of them travel by jeep to the state's largest monastery, Rumtek, on the outskirts of Gangtok. During the drive out of town, dozens of Tibetan Buddhist prayer flags punctuate the skyline, snap in the wind, and brighten the roadsides near villages and sacred sites. Heebner wanted to see how the flags were made...



This book is the retelling of that story.