Apart from Bill Cosby, whose reputation has suffered recently, our most famous local resident is probably glassmaker Josh Simpson. I first encountered Simpson’s work years ago at the Peabody-Essex Museum in Salem, which owns one of his “megaplanets.” A Simpson “planet” is a spherical ball with shapes inside made with a variety of techniques and an abundance of glassmaker’s “cane” (similar to a glass version of candy cane, sliced up to reveal intricate patterns). The planets evoke other worlds—Avatar-land or underwater seascapes—without actually depicting identifiable forms. A “megaplanet” is a large planet, a 4.5 diameter counts as a megaplanet, but Simpson has made several weighing over 100 pounds.
This megaplanet weighs 111 pounds
The Peabody-Essex also owns a very large plate by Simpson in what he calls New Mexico glass. Inspired by southwestern night skies, these large, dark blue plates and bowls, as simple in their colorscape (if not their execution) as the planets are lively and complex, invite meditation.
A wall of Simpson plates at the Salmon Falls Gallery; New Mexico glass bowls sit beneath.
I was instantly smitten with Simpson’s work and always sought out the megaplanet whenever I visited the Peabody-Essex. When we moved to Western Massachusetts a decade later, I was thrilled to discover we were living in fairly close proximity to this master craftsman.
A psychology major, Simpson discovered glass blowing while an undergraduate and never looked back. His work is featured in many galleries and major museums including Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts and the Corning Glass Museum, which commissioned the first 100-pound megaplanet. In 1997 Simpson married future astronaut Catherine “Cady” Coleman, at this writing a space shuttle and International Space Station vet, who has logged over 4000 hours outside planet Earth.
Simpson blows glass while Cady Coleman looks on
We recently attended a rare open studio at the Simpsons’ mountaintop establishment in Shelburne. Josh talked while he demonstrated his techniques and introduced Cady, who was between a baby shower and a soccer game, having just spent the week criss-crossing the world on NASA business. Meanwhile, I purchased a paperweight planet and a signature blue plate—similar to but much smaller than the objects I first fell in love with at the Peabody-Essex—purchases I could never have afforded at Simpson’s Salmon Falls Gallery in Shelburne Falls. The gallery is magical, however; walk in and you’re surrounded, enveloped really, by this glass artist’s amazing creations.
A row of gradated planets at the Salmon Falls Gallery
Photographs by Steven Sternbach
For more on Josh Simpson, see this article in The Recorder: http://www.recorder.com/One-of-a-kind-glass-planets-keep-trade-fresh-for-glass-artist-Josh-Simpson-16674820