Artist Josh Simpson first made glass in 1971, while spending a winter semester at Goddard
College. That year, he rented land in northern Vermont, lived in a teepee, and
built a tiny glass working studio out of old barn beams.
Now in his seventh decade of life, the Shelburne
Falls resident is considered by many to be one of the best glass blowers in the world.
Producer Dave Fraser visited with Simpson as he reflected back on his amazing career.
When I started to blow glass, I never for a moment considered it as a potential career.
It was just the most fun, exciting thing that I could possibly do at the time.
For half a century, Josh Simpson has been creating art objects from glass.
His studio is this big red barn, just off the Mohawk Trail in Shelburne Falls.
I think that all the work that I do is, in some way, related to space -- whether planets
that I make give you an idea of what it's like to be an astronaut orbiting around a
small, little world. But I also make -- I make pieces that I call
tektites, that have used the same formula of glass as meteorites that have fallen to
Earth from outer space. I also make plates that are what I feel are
my idea of what it's like to look up at the sky on a perfect summer night.
The process starts with a small, red hot, malleable mass of liquid on the end of
a blow pipe.
Fighting gravity with every turn, Simpson stops only to reheat and then rework the
piece until he's satisfied with the outcome. Glass is insanely hot.
You can never touch it.
It is one material that, as an artist, I can never, ever touch it with my hands.
The result would be horrific. And so, my job is to create something and
get that liquid to cooperate. That's part of the challenge.
That's part of what makes it fun, is the fact that you need to get as close as you
possibly can to this dangerous liquid. That's good! Ideally without burning
yourself, but -- or close enough to feel the heat.
In 1976, Simpson started making glass planets, complete with oceans, continents,
volcanoes, and clouds. Some of them have literally left this Earth
into Outer Space, traveling with his wife, astronaut Catherine "Cady" Coleman, who
lived on the International Space Station for several months in 2011.
The way he looks at this, at the piece, the way he just is so sure that if he wants it to
be a certain way, he can just do that. It's, in a way, it's like the Space
Program, where people say, "Well, when are we going to get to Mars?
" Well, we're going to go when we're ready. And it's -- and it's a long journey and it's
a lot of, actually, small steps. I see that in his work as well.
Where something that he's been thinking about, you know, 40 years ago -- you know, a
kind of combination of glass -- and then with what he's then been learning, I'll see
him kind of go back to that and go, "Wow, that thing that I couldn't do back then, now
I've got a way to do that." Josh and Cady married in 1997.
And one would think that marrying an astronaut was the reason for the creation of
the planets. But according to Josh, that's not the case.
I was making planets long before I met my wife.
It is amazing to me that Cady joined NASA in the way I imagine exploring the world.
I make these glass spheres and I think about flying around those, whether it's an
underwater scene or whether I feel like I'm an astronaut flying in orbit around one.
Many of the planets Simpson's made have been planted on mountaintops, hidden in forests,
and buried at sea all over the world as part of his Infinity Project.
He estimates that at least 3,000 globes have been hidden in diverse places around the
world. When I moved here
40 years ago, no one was collecting my glass.
And I thought, "You know, I should...I should make little spheres and hide them around the
world. Not with my name on them, but I should just hide them." And maybe someday
they'll be found by a random stranger or by a kid.
And it's kind of a present to give to somebody in the future.
Since learning glassblowing in the early as well as tremendous glass platters,
goblets, and bowls. The largest planets are a foot in diameter
and weigh 50 pounds or more. I feel so fortunate that the pieces that I
like to make, and the work and the concepts that I like to explore in glass, seem to be
things that people like to collect. And I've just been incredibly lucky that
people understand what I'm doing and want to share that.