Prayer Flags
This body of work, Prayer Flags, was executed between December 2020 and December 2021. It includes over 30 images, printed on handmade paper which I produced using daylily and abaca fiber, and then mounted to sheets of 110 lb French Paper through a chine college process. The print media employed in the series includes serigraphy, pochoir, wood relief, and relief printed laser woodcut. An offshoot of the bodies of work Chaos Garden, Chaos Garden II, and Chaos Garden III, this work continues to explore imagery related to landscape symbology and suburban and urban built environments. While developing the imagery and compositional structures for these pieces, I was considering the prevalent American mindset of balancing investment in resolving our social problems with a lack of willingness to act based on the perceived nuisance value of potential solutions. I connect the series title ‘Prayer Flags’ with the ever-present ‘hopes and prayers’ language we hear in the news media when disastrous happening and forecasting meet with cognitive dissonance or passivity. In addition, both the color palette and division of space in these works mimic Tibetan prayer flags, which we so often see appropriated by contemporary White Americans who connect Eastern spirituality with their own personal political ideology.
Media: all images include chine colle, handmade daylily and abaca washi, serigraph and relief on 26”x19” 100 lb French Paper
