The Santa Barbara International Film Festival’s 40th Anniversary poster BIRDWOMAN

Bird Woman, with gracefully raised arms as if in joyful greeting or a celebratory dance is poised before the bloom of a rosy dawn. She towers above an osprey—a raptor bird currently listed as a species of special concern due to habitat loss. On a lucky beach walk you might spy a pair of ospreys soaring, hovering, and hunting along our Santa Barbara coastline. The handmade paper collage is anchored by cut-out shapes of a darkly wild and restless sea. My source for this collage is a terracotta figure from pre-dynastic Egypt, (3650 BCE) excavated from el-Ma’mariya. The prominent beak-like head (hence its sobriquet, bird woman), emphasizes the nose as source of breath, of life itself.

Mary Heebner

HAIKU

On permanent display at the new UCSB Arts Library

This work is inspired by the bronze cast doors of Italy that, blackened through time, and polished by human touch, offer beautifully abstract details. I especially love the 2000-year-old original Roman bronze doors of the Pantheon in Rome, and Lorenzo Ghiberti’s ten relief-sculpted panels at the entrance to the octagonal Baptistry of San Giovanni in Florence.

Each 22.5 x 30” piece is made with gold, bronze, and graphite powders, and binder on Arches rag paper. The imagery references land, weather, organic form. I apply the powders and medium to the paper, drawing with my hands and blunt incising tools. I mount each painting onto archival rag paper-over-wood panels to form a grid mural 90 x 90 inches.

The series gets its name, haiku, from the three-line, seventeen-syllable poems of Japanese origin which evoke word-pictures through association, within a strictly structured format. I name each panel with a one or two syllable word such as bundle, bone, wave. Perhaps it will inspire a poem of your own.

This piece is dedicated to

John (Giovanni) Thomas Burgess Balkwill,

master printer, dear friend, and fine artist.

1952-2024.

I will be hosting two open studios in Spring 2025. For further details please contact info@maryheebner.com.