The onion moves along at the speed of a turtle. Deadlines are looming and we are about 2/3 of the way to having the first step complete! The latest glitch is the mirror spray. . .ah, the joys of living in a small town. (The back of each 3/4 inch tile is sprayed with mirroring spray, so when you come close to the onion you can see your reflection--hence "Sweet Reflections.") No one had it, so it had to be special ordered by a local paint store. We ramped through six cans we had in short order, necessitating the second special order. Floyd ordered more and the person went out of town, neglected to order and it takes six to seven days to get a special order. Hmmmm! Not happy campers.

But, leave it to "Mr. Good-in-a-Crisis." He found a "brilliant" silver spray that works just as well. We tried it out and we couldn't tell the difference and I think the mirror quality is better. So, Home Depot will sell out its supply of the new spray in the morning while we play catch up. Ron used up all the tiles today and was doing some fill in stuff, but we really are becalmed.

Floyd had one can of the new stuff, the experimental one, and he set to washing the glass and then spraying. Glass has to be really, really clean before spraying. You need several layers of spray for the stuff to really work and not just rub off. The pictures show Floyd standing on top of his head washing large sheets of glass and then outside he goes to do the spraying. It really smells terrible. Check out "Mr. Look-at-me-stand-on-my head."

Floyd and Nancy spent the morning working on the onion. First is cutting tiles that are 3/4" which is an incredibly boring and tedious task. It is complicated by the fact that the back of the glass has a coating of "mirror" spray and rubs off as you work and comes off the glass if you are not careful. By the time I was done cutting about 500 tiles I was covered in silver mirror spray. I need a radio in the studio with some spirited music or chat when I am cutting.

The next step is using hot glue to adhere the tiles to the onion. You can see Ron hard at work gluing the tiles to the onion. It goes pretty fast. The layout looks like a brick walk way, rather than rows, but working on something round presents it own challenges. When it was my turn to glue I spent most of my time picking up little tiles off the floor. Floyd and I took a turn at doing each of the jobs, tiling is lots more fun than cutting and Floyd managed to cut himself during his stint at the tiling making job.

I am ready to talk about grout and the two fellas are stonewalling me that grout is not a topic for discussion until the tiles are glued and they can make an informed decision. Squint your eyes and you get an idea of what a dark grout would do for the onion. A lighter grout would make it look like it does now, because of the white color of the fiber glass. Any opinions on grout color, I need reinforcements.

Nancy is back in the office, but barely. She is operating on two cylinders, not her usual eight. But the pictures Floyd took are great and the glass the fellas selected is yummy and with grout, will be a stunning project. So, hot glue gun and tiny tiles and we are off to the races.

The onion project is moving right along. We have had some bumps in the road, however. First finding the right glass. Floyd and Ron finally took off for points west. They ran off to Tacoma to our regular glass supplier at Big M glass. He is a wholesaler and had been trying to help long distance, but it was clear the fellas needed to look at glass themselves. Nancy stayed home. The reason is one of the road bumps.

Floyd did a raft of substitute teaching and got those "school kid" cooties. He spent most of May battling the cold and then an inner ear condition that screwed up his balance. This malady is one Nancy has had since her early 20s. Floyd has always been a terrific "nurse" when Nancy was sick with the balance problem, but now he really gets it! Nancy held down the fort as best possible, but got the cold and is still laid up with the inner ear stuff. Thank goodness for wireless and the internet.

This has slowed work on the onion, but Ron is forging on. Floyd has build the onion its own little wagon so we can move it around (pictures in a day or two) and Ron has worked on the top and is beginning the mosaic process (ditto on the pictures). We have a deadline looming and Nancy is excessively crabby, due to an inability to help.

The scanning was a success. The latest picture is the design we submitted for this juried work. The onion came on a platform designed to be bolted to a concrete slab. That wasn't in our plan and we are sorta having to work around it for the base. But, it is doable.

The challenge at the moment is the glass. Ever really look at an onion? It is brown and yellow and a combination of both. And we are spraying the back of the glass with a substance that smells really bad, but mirrors the surface of the glass, so when you look at the front of the glass you see yourself.

We have discovered that any texture in the glass distorts that, so it eliminates a whole raft of choices. And it has to be brown and yellow. The guys are likely going to make a trip to Tacoma to a wholesale place to look at glass. We have scraps that are close in color, but not quite right. We chewed up a whole can of the mirror spray and it is $10. a bottle and we are making no money on this project. Oh, a $50. stipend for entering. We sprayed every conceivable color and not found one that is suitable yet. But, we forge on being challenged each day as we go.

And in the midst of this Floyd got sick--an inner ear thing that messed up his equilibrium! And boys are so good when they are sick! He is fussing about not being here, but he would fall down, and Ron and I think that is unseemly.

Eileen Cackowski asked about the weight. We know it will be heavy and one thing our sick guy is doing is designing a roll around wagon for the onion. We have to be able to move it and so do the Onion Festival Folks. Not sure if we will ever be able to weigh it, but we are planning to count the little tiles and have a raffle to guess the number.

The Onion Arrives

Irises like those in the picture surround the building where Gilded Glass has a studio. The full flush of spring has brought purple and white irises in abundance. They stand as sentinels guarding the work that goes on inside, demanding a similar level of perfection. Nature is a hard task master.

In November Gilded Glass (Floyd Bunt, Ron Williams and Nancy Macduff) submitted a proposal to create a 4' onion for the Walla Walla Sweet Onion Festival and the Tourism board. It was a juried competition (no money!), but create an onion to be display permanently in town. Washington DC did it with donkeys and elephants, Chicago did it with cows. The onion is oversized. About 4' tall and at least that much around. The fiber glass model on which we will build the onion arrived last week. It graces the big blue table and is currently an eye sore and in the way of the "chicken project and Ron's sister's kitchen cabinet doors.

I decided to record its move from being an eye sore to a piece of art work. There will be picture and stories and tears, no doubt. And it must be done in July. It will be a mosaic with thousands and thousands of pieces.