Still I Rise Window Dressing Project

Building a paper phoenix for 826 Valencia

I’ve been organizing my digital photos and recently came across this window dressing project I did for 826 Valencia’s Tenderloin location in January 2021, at the height of the pandemic. Constructed in my cold garage while binge-watching the first season of “The Bridgertons,” this piece features a phoenix made from cut and painted book pages, rising out of an old Royal typewriter donated by a friend, with words from Maya Angelou’s “And Still I Rise” typed on the paper, so it looks like ideas/writing/stories are taking flight off the page,. The tail feathers are stamped with positive words in English and Spanish. My husband and installed it, masked and socially distanced, in a grimy window (which made it incredibly hard to photograph!) facing a street mostly devoid of foot traffic, but I hope a few people got to see it during its run.

When I originally submitted the proposal, I was thinking of the 826 kids and Tenderloin residents rising above difficult circumstances, but the pandemic added an extra layer of meaning to the project, as we struggled to rebuild from a difficult year. It was a labor of love, and became a cathartic experience for me personally. I like that the phoenix symbolizes hope and rising from adversity, and also that it’s the symbol of San Francisco and appears in the mythology of several different cultures.

I’ve never thought so much about the power of words as I did while assembling this project. By random chance, the worn-out books I had on hand to work with were mostly American history books and a paperback copy of “To Kill a Mockingbird” that had literally fallen apart into its constituent pages. Suddenly every page I picked up seemed to be crowded with tales of colonization and subjugation, or words I didn’t want to put out in the world. I ended up having to think very carefully about what pages and words I was using for each feather.

It also took an interesting bit of engineering to figure out how to make it look like it was taking flight but still be sturdy enough to hang from the ceiling. All in all, it was an interesting project!

I’d love to do more window displays, especially featuring books, paper and plants – hit me up if you have a space or idea you’d like to see come to life!