The Phoenix—: A Rebirth From Fire and Ashes, Both Literally and Figuratively

For me, the process of birthing the Phoenix award for the Children's Literature Association was the pleasure of creative collaboration, from the inspired beginning to the product end. I cannot attest to the idea's beginning, as those belong to Alethea Helbig and her committee; but I can attest to the care and appreciation she expressed as the physical Phoenix came into being.

My introduction to this process came along with an introduction to Jill May in the summer of 1984. As an artist who works with metal and who has been a "closet" picture book lover long after my children outgrew them, it was a pleasure to meet someone who not only loved them too, but who also could enjoy them professionally, and who could even talk about them at adult gatherings. This led to my now seemingly naive question to Jill about whether she knew of Trina Hyman's work. Trina had been one of my all-time favorite illustrators. Wow! Not only did she know her, but they were friends, and Trina was designing an award for an organization of which Jill was a part. Jill asked if I knew anything about sculpture casting. Well, one of my most special years was spent as an apprentice at an art foundry on the East Coast. Was this fate, or was this fate? The chance to work with Trina and with a process with which I actually had experience was exciting to say the least. It was easy to say, "Yes, I'd love to work on it." I knew that there would be moments of panic and uncertainty, but I also knew that it felt right.

Trina gave the Phoenix its first sense of visualization. She began her part of the process by searching for information about the Phoenix. Her dictionary of folklore, myth and legend described the Phoenix as a red and gold bird about the size of an eagle. It builds a nest of twigs from Cassia and Frankincense in which to die. Out of the funeral pyre, the new Phoenix grows. In terms of a visual image, her search yielded a lot of written material about the legend, but few artists' renderings. Ivan Bilibin, the Russian illustrator, uses a lot of mythical bird figures in his work, and Trina took some clues from his firebird, but mostly, the image evolved through her own mind's eye—"a combination eagle, heron and egret . . but mostly great blue heron. Nice and exotic, noble yet compassionate, ever youthful and commanding and full of grace." In the Egyptian folklore, the Phoenix is a symbol of the rising sun; Trina included the sun and flames in both the front and back of the design because she felt them appropriate to the award.

After the Phoenix Award Committee chose the visual interpretation they wanted (Trina had submitted three different variations), my work began. Normally, the form would have been sculpted in clay, then cast in plaster in order to create a model, from which the foundry would make a rubber mold, cast waxes, and then cast bronzes. For the sake of the shoulds and oughts, I tried some clay modeling, but then quickly moved to a thin gauge sheet of brass, where I knew that my ability to communicate was more at home. Placing the metal on a variety of soft surfaces such as magazines, Fomecore and a sandbag, I began pushing and poking both sides of the metal sheet using an odd assortment of seemingly undignified tools—ballpoint pens, plastic stylus and metal repousse and chasing tools. There were a few exploratory trials to test materials, tools, and image details; then the "real thing" was begun in earnest. It was with nervous anticipation that I watched Trina's Phoenix lift off of the flat, paper-like metal surface and become feather, flames, sun and bird. I had hoped that the three-dimensional life I was breathing into the form would be true to the Phoenix in Trina's rendering. As it grew, so did my excitement and pleasure. I did the front and...