Work on Phoenixville Firebird Festival is well underway

PHOENIXVILLE — Held each year as a way honor to the rebirth of the town of Phoenixville and to celebrate the upcoming winter solstice, the annual Firebird Festival was forced to take a break in 2020 due to the pandemic.

This year, the crowd is limited to 500 spectators due to Covid-19 safety precautions, however, there will be a livestream from the field so everyone can tune in and watch the burning of the giant wooden statue on Phoenixville Area High School’s Phantom TV channel, as well as the Firebird Festival’s Youtube channel.

For the first time, tickets were sold in an effort to manage attendees at Veterans Memorial Park on Saturday, Dec. 11. Although organizers are concerned there will be people who will come to the gate without tickets, they are hopeful the festival will return to normal next year and be free of charge.

“We have the challenge this year of only 500 people,” noted event creator and organizer Henrik Stubbe Teglbjaer. “People come from all over, from as far as Maine, and everybody may not know they will need tickets at the gate to get in. How we limited the festival was through selling tickets. The festival has always been free and I definitely want it to go back to being free again. We have a lot of expenses, even with the paid tickets we are just barely making and paying for the festival.”

Known for his dedication to the festival each year, Teglbjaer has steadily been building the statue for several weeks along with a team of volunteers. Improvising the construction of the mythical bird as they go, Teglbjaer noted they often let whatever donated wood materials they can get their hands on lead the way as the enormous structure takes shape.

This year’s phoenix will have a rotating head and stands 25 feet tall, with a wingspan that stretches about 70 feet. There will be 150 small clay bird sculptures inside a makeshift kiln inside the base of the bird that will be fired as the large phoenix burns.

This year’s phoenix was designed by Derek Wieneke who first envisioned the bird to reflect a geometrical origami type shape, which then progressed into a four-sided pyramid structure. The bird will have a rotating head and will be decorated on all sides with art made by volunteers.

“I’ve always had a dream of an origami, polygon bird which hasn’t really come to fruition. I salvaged the simplicity of the design and thought to myself, how do I get simple geometric shapes to still look like a bird? I decided to build a simple bird that can be decorated on each side and came up with a strange pyramid idea,” said Wieneke.

He noted how the design is the same angle and shape as the great pyramid Khufu, one of the biggest pyramids in Giza, Egypt.

“The angle is from the Egyptians, the scale is from nature, and the idea for the whole thing came from Henrik. It is an angle of 51.3 degrees. That is the angle the Egyptians decided would not crumble when they were piling on hundreds of thousands of stone blocks, hundreds of feet in the air. That was an adjusted number that took them a thousand years to get to, and almost a century more to get right,” he added.

Volunteer Kathy Bunting was inspired to create pieces of art from the extra pieces of wood and other organic materials to decorate the second tier of the phoenix. It became an “art gallery” with numerous pieces of artwork adorning all sides of the bird’s body as additional volunteers and members of the community also contributed work.

“It’s all about the community. A lot of the wood is from the floods, pieces of people’s homes that they brought to add to the burn. So it is also about releasing what you have lost and coming back from the ashes and healing. It’s a really unique way to incorporate everybody. It’s everybody’s bird. Even Derek’s design has four bodies, so when the head rotates, it incorporates each side and brings everyone together. It may be abstract but it is bringing the focus back to the community that started it all,” said Bunting.

The entirety of the event will be centered at the field, without the usual entertainment on Bridge Street beforehand. The parade carrying the torch up to the Phoenix will also be on hold until next year. There will be 25 food and craft vendor booths set up at the field offering unique wares.

“In a sense, it is a big party up at the field. Usually, the buskers, fire spinners and all the street performers are downtown, but this year they will be up at the field the whole time. The drum circle will also be in the field. I have a feeling it is going to be a nice atmosphere,” said Teglbjaer, who reflected the reduced crowd size will return to the first few years of the festival which were smaller, more intimate gatherings. He also encourages people to celebrate in their own way from home.

More information is available at firebirdfest.com