Josh Simpson Works

Artist’s Statement

People often want to know what the meaning is behind my work, particularly the planets; some think I have a profound understanding of life.  I think I have an appreciation for what's around me – the sky at night, the changing seasons, the views I get looking out of my studio down the valley.  That comes out in my work, not in any purposeful way but slowly.  My work evolves in such incremental steps that I often don't recognize the natural influences until someone points them out to me.

What I like to do in planets is pack them with more information than the naked eye can see.  I've always been fascinated by technology.  I couldn't begin to build a microchip but some of my spaceships probably have as many discrete elements as one.

Along with the natural world, my motivation comes directly from the material itself.  Glass is an alchemical blend of sand and metallic oxides combined with extraordinary, blinding heat.  The result is a material that flows and drips like honey.  When it’s hot, glass is alive.  It moves gracefully and inexorably in response to gravity and centrifugal force.  It possesses an inner light and transcendent radiant heat that makes it simultaneously one of the most frustrating – and one of the most rewarding – materials to work with.   I attempt to coax it; all it wants to do is drip on the floor.  Most of my work reflects a compromise between me and the glass; the finished piece is the moment in time when we agree.

Evolution is an apt word to describe the trajectory of my work – it is an organic process that happens over time and is full of trial and error.  Thirty years into my career as a glass artist, I can look back and see the branching in the evolutionary family trees of my work.  In the moment, when I am in my studio, I don’t think about where I’ve come from, I merely ask the next question of myself and the glass and move toward its answer.

Thirty years ago, I started out focusing on making goblets because to me they represented the ultimate challenge for a glass artist.  I spent seventeen years seeking the perfect goblet.  But that wasn’t all I did during that time.  With the goblets and then planets, vases, and iridescent glass, as with all my work, I have always learned by experimenting and doing.  When I came up against a technical obstacle I couldn’t overcome, I read from my growing personal library of books on glass and often consulted with the folks at the Corning Museum of Glass or the Rakow Library.  It’s probably a character flaw, but I don’t give up easily.  I usually work at something until I’m satisfied that I’ve got it right.