July "onion layers"

Thanks to all the people who have contributed to "Putting Layers on the Onion"! Here are several recent contributions --

Sears Tower is tall,
tallest of all.
Soon comes a taller tower,
the Chicago spire,
a lot higher
than good old Sears Tower.


Looking out over
sandy beach.
Smiling over cinnamon sticks,
wondering when the wave will reach.
Glad to be a Chicagoan hick.


Chicago is a busy, overcrowded,
yet beautiful city. Its roots are
as old and antique as this piece of
paper looks and smells.


I enjoy going to the Lego store in the mall.



They have
good tea
in Chicago.







Remember the alewives
along the beaches? I'll
take spices any day.






Lake Michigan
I think of red & pink
the colors of sunrise
Japanese dishes
just regular
no stinky onions

June "onion layers"

Here are some lines of writing that people have written on pieces of paper, affixed to the surface of "Putting Layers on the Onion" --

I am at the window of the first apartment we had in Chicago -- a third floor apartment with a row of floor to ceiling French doors. I am looking down the Rogers Park Street. I miss the pine trees. This paper looks and smells a little bit like them.

* * *

Chicago is a very good city with very good food, and the streets are very busy.

* * *

Does the orange line rumbling away smell like licorice?

* * *

a raisin is a grape that gets sweeter under blue sky -- I'm here 10 years

* * *

life of a busy street

* * *

Rode my bike down Diversey. A balloon tied to the back. We met on the bike path, riding south toward the big building. At least a full hour before sunrise. In the dark thousands of us swarming to organize. When the sun came up we were sitting at the harbor. The water calm.

* * *

Walking home hung over at 6 a.m., and smelling of cocoa. It made me feel sicker.

* * *

My sister solves the mystery! We are under the tracks, rusted & loud.

putting the module together

building the onion

branches on the passenger's side



branches in the front yard



handsaw, twine, & chicken wire



lashing together the armature's base



the armature coming together



the armature in the hallway



the armature from above



trimming the base



shaping the chicken wire



onion mesh shape



wire onion from above



onion, papier-mached



the onion from above



strips of ripped comics & ads



putting on the first layer of paint



close up of onion shoots



the end of a shoot



the onion from above


IS IT AN ONION, OR IS IT GARLIC?
It took a while trying to figure out how the onion would come together. One problem comes from the dispute over the origin of the name Chicago. Some historians think Chicago is derived from the Native American word for onion, whereas others think the name refers to marsh garlic. There is no consensus as to which Native American tribe originated the word on which the name Chicago is derived -- from Potawatomi, Miami-Illinois, or another Native American language.

* * * *

HUNTING FOR SUPPLIES
Oil paint was out. Acrylic seemed to be the right paint to use. I went to Blick's on State St., and the people there were very helpful. They had those big boxes of mashed up papier-mache, but I decided to go "old school" and just use strips of newspaper with flour.

I wanted to figure out some way to have the "layers" be aromatic, but I wasn't sure how to do that. A friend told me about some international flavor company, and I thought about asking them if I could get some free samples. But apparently they're out of business. I bought some bottles of dill, clove, and other spices at Stanley's, and I bought some bottles of vanilla & other extracts at another grocery store.

* * * *

THE ONION'S ARMATURE
The first plan was to have the onion hang from an apparatus, and I was thinking about papier-macheing a big balloon (maybe the size of one of those large Chinese paper lanterns), but a friend suggested that it be a floor-mounted piece. That seemed more logistically feasible.

I wasn't sure what the armature should be, and I thought coat rack sawed in half, with some 2"x4"s nailed it might work. I ditched that idea, and I was thinking about bamboo. I went to Home Depot, but they didn't sell bamboo, except for those Tiki torches. Then I went to Jo-Ann Fabrics, but all they had was sharpie-thick decorative branches. It made me wish I was living in someplace where bamboo grows wild in groves. Like last December I was down in Atlanta visiting my cousins, and there was a big bamboo grove down the street from their house, with a pile of dead bamboo in a pile.

I had an epiphany while I was standing in the ornamental flowers & grass aisle at Jo-Ann Fabrics -- I'd gather some branches from some location here in Chicago. I live in Chicago's west side, and there aren't any huge tracts of woodsy areas in my vicinity, but there are some parks. I bought a hand saw, and I went to a local park. I saw a dead tree, and I sawed off some branches.

I came back to my place, and I lashed branches together with twine. The branches for the base are thicker, like logs for a fireplace. Photos of this stage of the process can be viewed here.

* * * *

THE SHAPE OF THE ONION
There's no way a papier-mache onion should or could be completely "anatomically" correct, in relation to the vegetable it's supposed to represent. The onion is pretty lumpy now. It balloons at the bottom, and it's far from symmetrical. You can see the hexagonal outlines of the chicken wire (which I think resonates serendipitously with the hexagonal shapes of the stacked SPC modules (as seen from above), as well as the bee track, which is part of the World Listening Project's "Acoustic Mirror of the World" sound installation piece). Photos of this stage of the process can be viewed here.

* * * *

THE ONION'S SHOOTS
I decided to make five shoots. Five's a good number, and I remember when I took art lessons from Peggy Ward when I was a kid, she mentioned the principle of using an odd number of items in flower arrangements, etc.

I made the shapes with coathangers. Then I cut strips of text and images from some books about gardening in the Midwest, which I bought at Myopic Books. I wove strips together, then I wrapped them around the coathanger shapes. I wrapped the ends of the coathangers around parts of the armature.

Final stages of the onion's construction can be viewed here.