Glowing cactus illuminates renovated Mission Branch Library

A window at the renovated Mission Branch Library on 24th and Barlett streets doesn’t open, but it offers a glimpse into Mesoamerican heritage through colorful glass panes depicting a prickly-pear cactus. Lit from behind by a panel of LEDs, NOPAL DE LA MISIÓN sits at the top of the library’s new grand staircase. The artwork is vibrant with violet petals, yellow blossoms and an image of the feathered serpent deity Quetzalcoatl. 

The artist, Juana Alicia, has spent decades putting murals on Mission walls, a fresco at San Francisco International Airport, installations at Stanford’s Centro Chicano and colorful ceramic tiles at one of UCSF’s outpatient clinics. But she had never worked with glass until now.

Alicia gives credit to Kimberly Jackman of Jackman Glassworks and Dorothy Lenahan, who trained Jackman, for helping her dive into the world of glass art. “We worked hand in glove together,” said Alicia.  

The piece took five years from proposal to installation, with most of the fabrication done in the last year. 

“Every flower, every penca, every tuna, every one of the fruits was cut out, hand glazed, fired, and then fused together with all the other pieces in a kiln,” Alicia said at a preview of the piece and the new library. “It was a long and sometimes very tedious project.”

The nopal, said Alicia, is a nod to the founding legend of Tenochtitlan, today’s Mexico City, where the wandering Mexica people were said to have spotted an eagle on a prickly pear that was growing out of a rock. Alicia modeled her design on the purple prickly pear, Opuntia violacea, and described it as a symbol of resistance under difficult conditions: a plant that blooms in the desert, feeds people and regenerates easily.

Alicia dedicated the work to her maternal grandmother, Martha Rosenthal, who brought her to the public library from the time she could walk, and to her grandchildren, whom she called “tremendous readers.”

Mission Local sat down with Alicia after the preview.

You’ve worked in fresco, ceramics and paint. This is your first major glass piece. What was the most memorable moment of learning for you?

Juana Alicia: When I was first fabricating my sample pieces with Dorothy and Kimberly, I saw this textural ground glass — thick ground glass, like on the pistils of the flowers, which are actually 3D. When I saw the marble-like shapes, I said, “Can I make this 3D?” And they said, “Sure, go ahead, try it out.” And I was like, “Oh my God!” That was an epiphany.

You learned from other artists, and you developed your Stanford murals with students and the community. Is the art world more collaborative than people think?

Juana Alicia: One source for collaboration is the idea of the minga, the collaborative project that people do to help each other build their houses or create a community. When the Chicano movement flowered here in the 1970s and 80s, there was a great sense of community and collaboration. There were some protagonists, too, who just wanted to be art stars.

But aside from the pre-Columbian or cultural roots of working collaboratively, a big impact was the feminist movement. The model for feminism is a horizontal relationship, a democratic relationship, not a protagonistic relationship. People building something together.

So not the idea of one person on a pedestal.

Juana Alicia: That’s correct. The paradigm of the sole genius, generally a white European male, working in his garret studio when all of a sudden there’s this brilliant idea — no. We know that people are all standing on each other’s shoulders. 

Libraries are where kids escape into stories, where people come in to get out of the rain or the heat, maybe without thinking much about the art. How does it feel to contribute to a space like that?

Juana Alicia: Oh, it’s totally thrilling. There are so many novels about people coming of age in libraries — escaping from oppression, escaping from bad family situations, escaping from the street. That’s sort of a classic story, and I’m happy that it keeps repeating here.