Shining in the sunlight, bright-painted planes, wagons, rockets and wheels fill the sky in downtown Wilson, North Carolina. A breeze begins to blow and the sculptures start to spin, slowly at first, then as the wind picks up, they start to sing… a mechanical cacophony of rattles, clunks and clanks that speaks of an earlier age of the world, when machines were simpler and didn’t run on computer chips.
The art show overhead at Wilson’s whirligig park are the work of Vollis Simpson, the man the New York Times memorialized as “a visionary artist of the junkyard” after his death in 2013. In 2010, a public/private partnership that includes the City of Wilson, Wilson Downtown Properties, Wilson Downtown Development Corporation, and the North Carolina Arts Council, among others, decided to purchase the contraptions Simpson called “my windmills” and restore them. Today, more than 30 spin overhead in Wilson’s Whirligig Park, the centerpiece of the North Carolina town’s revitalization.
“The Vollis Simpson Whirligig Park since opening has seen a large volume of additional visitors to Wilson,” said Sandra Homes, executive director of the Wilson Visitors Center. The whirligigs have become a recognizable symbol of Wilson, so much so that the Wilson tourism folks have installed examples of Simpson’s work at the North Carolina Visitor Centers at the South Carolina and Virginia borders along I-95.
Jeff Bell, executive director of Whirligig Park and the soon-to-open museum next door, has been a Vollis Simpson fan since he was a teenager. His mother, a high school teacher, first took him over to Lucama, a town about 14 miles from Wilson, to see - and listen to - the whirligigs Simpson installed in his field.
“Once I was old enough to drive, my friends and I would go over there all the time,” he recalls. The teenager met Vollis in his workshop, surrounded by pieces of discarded machines, old road signs and bicycle parts. “He was very laid back, sort of humble,” Bell says. “He didn’t do it for the fame. He told me he just had the desire to make things. It was what he loved to do.”
According to Bell, Simpson didn’t start devoting himself to building his wind machines until after retirement from a life spent as a farm machinery mechanic, welder and mover. “He spent his life moving things - houses, barns, machinery - and when nobody wanted something, he took it home.”
Jeff Bell says Simpson was an intuitive engineer, although he left school in the 11th grade. “Anything that came into his head he could build.”
Bell says that Vollis told him: “That’s my life out there in the field.”
Vollis Simpson [Photo/Vollis Simpson Whirligig Park and Museum]
Looking around Whirligig Park, Bell sees many autobiographical references. “Vollis served in the Army Air Corps in WW II, so he made lots of airplanes. He worked on a farm. That’s him driving a tractor and sawing wood. His son played in a band. That’s him keeping time by tapping his foot while he plays the guitar.”
Bell says he also thinks of the whirligigs as preserving historical artifacts. “All these materials were sourced locally,” he says. “There’s an industrial loom from a local factory over there, and lots of other things if you look at all the parts he used.”
It was in the Army Air Corps that Simpson made his first windmill. It powered his company’s washing machine, using parts from a junked B-29 Superfortress bomber.
Vollis started building whirligigs in earnest when he retired in his 60s and continued until just before his death at 94. By then, fame had come calling. In 1995, the new American Visionary Art Museum installed Simpson’s 55-foot red-white-and-blue “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” wind-sculpture as its signature artwork in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor.
The following year, four of his works were installed in Atlanta’s Olympic Folk Art Park. The New York City artistic community took interest, articles and books were written, and Simpson was officially “discovered” as a folk or outsider artist, with exhibits in top folk art museums across the country. His wind-sculptures found their way as far afield as Russia, England, and Canada.
The story of Wilson’s whirligigs to recharge the downtown area has catapulted the community into the national spotlight [Photo by Renee Wright]
However, back in Lucama, the sculptures out in the field, the majority of his work, were rusting away after Vollis could no longer climb the poles, some 40 and 50 feet high, to repair, paint and lubricate them. It was at this point that the Wilson public/private partnership stepped in, buying the sculptures and taking Simpson on as a consultant on their restoration.
“The conservation was a seven year process,” Jeff Bell says. “We brought them in one at a time, restored them with brand new paint, changed out all the bearings and gears, and replaced all the reflective pieces - 22,000 of them.”
The project required the assistance of numerous professional conservators from across the country, hailing from institutions that included the sonian and museums in Philadelphia and Los Angeles. Experts from the National Park Service established the restoration protocols that have since been used as a blueprint for outdoor folk art installations. Funds for the restoration came from grants from national and state funds, including the National Endowment for the Arts and the NC Arts Council, and especially through local fundraising, with many Wilson residents investing in the town’s future.
Much of the actual work was done by local college students participating in workforce training programs. “What a fun way to learn welding!” Bell remarks. The Whirligig Conservation Center has also restored Simpson sculptures now on display at the NC Museum of Art in Raleigh, and in Cary, Hickory and Wilmington, NC.
A grant from the Kohler Foundation, which devotes itself to art preservation, especially works by twentieth-century self-taught artists, allowed the conservation efforts to be completed. In 2017, the Vollis Simpson Whirligig Park officially opened on a two-acre track in downtown Wilson with 30 of Simpson’s largest sculptures, the world’s largest collection, spinning in the wind. The whirligigs share space with a large outdoor amphitheater used for concerts and films, and a pavilion that hosts farmers and artisan markets on Wednesdays and Saturdays, April to October.
In 2019, the park is hosting over 100 events, including weekly concert series and the Whirligig Festival, held annually on the first weekend in November. The free two-day event draws as many as 50,000 people for a weekend of bands, kid’s activities, food and craft vendors and local talent.
The park has proved a popular spot for parties, picnics and get-togethers, and artists can frequently be seen here, sketching the whirligigs or capturing them on film. A brewery recently opened across the street and, on another corner, the new Whirligig Museum will soon open in an old tobacco auction warehouse currently being converted into the Lofts at Whirligig Station.
“We’re waiting on the developers to finish our museum space and on-site restaurant now,” Bell says. “They’ve rented about half of the 94 apartments so far.”
Once completed, the museum will tell the history of the whirligigs’ creation and restoration and showcase some of the smaller works by Vollis Simpson as well as pieces of whirligigs that were too deteriorated to put in the park and instead were recreated. “It’s a great chance to see the originals up close, so you can see how they work,” Bell, who also will be director of the museum, says. A gift shop will sell small whirligigs, pinwheels and other mementoes.
Located a short distance from I-95 at exit 121, the Whirligig Park is open daily from 5 a.m. to midnight. According to Jeff Bell, the hours after dark are the best.
“When I was a teenager, we’d ride over at night and turn our headlights on to watch the whirligigs spin,” Jeff says. “They were all covered in pieces of signs that Vollis cut up and attached to his sculptures. They look amazing at night.”
The restoration process has replaced each and every one of those reflective pieces and special night lighting illuminates them, recreating the mystical experience appreciated by Bell and other residents as car headlights caught the sculptures. Red stars set in the park pavement lead visitors to “sweet spots” to view the reflective pieces.
“I always recommend visitors come late in the day, if they can,” Jeff says. “The sunset really lights up the colors and then you can stay and see the show at night.”
What accounts for our fascination with whirligigs? Walt Whitman, hailed as the first truly American poet, wrote in 1888 that it’s may be trait tied up in our national character: “Open up all your valves and let her go. Swing. Whirl with the rest. You will soon get under such momentum. You can’t stop if you would.”
Culture, Destinations, Entertainment, North Carolina, Outdoors