Vollis Simpson Dies At Age 94
Famous North Carolina artist, Vollis Simpson, died Friday in his sleep at his home in the town of Lucama. He was 94 years old.
Born in 1919 to a farming family with twelve children, young Vollis Simpson helped his father supplement the family income by moving houses. This somewhat unusual occupation called upon age-old techniques of fulcrum, leverage and rollers, and the Simpson side business spanned the years of horse power transitioning to automotive power.
Service in the Army Air Corps during WWII with duty on the South Pacific island of Saipan became another venue for Simpson’s ability to solve problems with machinery using unconventional resources. The example most often cited describes the isolated island force, poorly supplied for a lengthy stay in a tropical climate, needing a clean supply of uniforms. Simpson experimented with rudimentary windmill technology using a junked B-29 bomber to power a large washing machine.
Rather than take up farming after the war, Simpson partnered with several friends to open a machinery repair shop. As the years passed, Simpson followed in his father’s footsteps and developed a house-moving side to the business. Throughout his career, Simpson cultivated relationships with local purveyors of machinery parts, industrial salvage, transportation supplies, and any vendor, auctioneer or “junk man” who might have useful materials applicable to the repair business. Not willing to see such useful objects go to waste, Simpson began to collect and store them in his workshop and yard.
When retirement beckoned to his partners at age sixty-five, Simpson set out to re-purpose those useful objects. Slowly giant windmills began to rise in Simpson’s field. Outsiders called them whirligigs, but he clung to his preferred term, “windmills.” Locals shook their heads in wonder and bemusement.
Close inspection of these twirling behemoths reveals an inventory of objects that serves as a catalog of the agricultural and industrial economic history of the second half of the twentieth century in eastern North Carolina. Highway and road signs, HVAC fans, bicycles, ceiling fans, mirrors, stovepipes, I-beams, pipe, textile mill rollers, ball bearings, aluminum sheeting, various woods, steel rods, rings, pans, milkshake mixers and many more such materials form the supports and moving parts. Punctuating the massive conglomerations of parts and pieces are larger-than-life representations of farm animals and people. Some figures reference experiences from Simpson’s own life, such as the many WWII era airplanes and the guitar player based on Simpson’s son who joined a rock and roll band. Other figures, the lumberjacks sawing wood, for example, recreate the classic interacting figures that characterize fencepost whirligigs of jackknife and jigsaw.
Simpson’s “signature” finishing touch to his windmill structures were devised from highway road signs. Simpson realized that if he cut up signs into 1” square chips and fastened them to the surface of his windmills, they would reflect light, particularly at night. Spaced evenly at 3 to 5 inch intervals, thousands of reflectors gleam from every surface. Catching the whirligigs’ sparkling revolutions in their headlights became a favorite nighttime activity of many in Wilson County.