Simpson's whirligigs to be featured in Allcott Gallery

Vollis Simpson didn’t believe that it was ever appropriate to throw anything in the trash.

It was that essential thriftiness that led to the creation of his trademark whirligigs over nearly three decades of work and made him a sensation in the realm of vernacular art across the world.

And now visitors to the John and June Allcott Gallery in the Hanes Art Center are set to get a glimpse of Simpson’s world through an exhibit of his whirligigs curated by art professor Jina Valentine.

The whirligigs in the gallery, which are made completely from salvaged materials, soar to heights at just under 9 feet. The smallest range from 4 to 5 feet.

Valentine said there will be several restored whirligigs, as well as two reproductions in the gallery. There will also be two original whirligigs that have not been restored to show the amount of wear the pieces have undergone.

Valentine said she first thought of the idea for the exhibit when she visited Simpson’s hometown in Wilson County, N.C., where, after Simpson’s death in May 2013 at age 94, community members began a massive project to restore and preserve the whirligigs. People in the community decided to start the project after noticing that many of the whirligigs were too rusted to move.

“Since I’ve been putting on the shows, I don’t think I’ve ever had so many positive responses from students walking by,” she said. “People are really blown away by the scale of the works.”

Valentine said there will also be posters from the Wilson Whirligig Park restoration project, which aims to create a park to house Simpson’s creations. Gallery visitors will be able to learn more about the restoration process and about Simpson’s life.

Valentine said the process of putting together the show has been difficult because of the size and weight of the whirligigs. She said some of them weigh hundreds of pounds and are covered in dirt.

“I was told that when Vollis was asked about how he shipped his whirligigs, he said that he would just throw them in the back of an old pickup truck and haul them,” she said. “But because they are in the middle of being conserved and many of them are in different states of stability, moving them does require more care.”

Brendan Greaves, who served as a liaison to the North Carolina state government to secure funding for the restoration project, said Simpson’s varied experiences shaped the creation of his whirligigs. He said Simpson was an all-purpose handyman before he was an artist, owning a salvage yard, moving houses and building cranes.

“Vollis grew up in Wilson County and lived there his whole life except for a period he served in World War II in the Pacific, which is where he supposedly built his first whirligig,” he said.

“He built a wind-powered washing machine for his fellow soldiers.”

Greaves said after Simpson returned home from the war, he built other wind-powered devices around his house. But it wasn’t until he retired when he turned to making large-scale pieces as his daily vocation.

He also said the work captures a sense of community and its industrial history through its use of salvaged material.

“He dug the holes and erected the structures with cranes and trucks that he built himself,” he said. “The work is a testimony to not only his own genius and ingenuity but also to an attitude found among rural folks in eastern North Carolina and throughout the South.”

Jenny Moore, the project manager for the Wilson Whirligig Project, said she hopes the exhibit at UNC serves as a teaser for students to come to the park.

She also said the biggest whirligig at the park will be almost 55-feet long. She said workers will have five whirligigs installed in the park for the phase-one opening on Nov. 1, and she hopes that all 30 whirligigs will be in the park within the next year.

She said Simpson’s inspirational life is what drives the team to restore the whirligigs.

“Here’s this man who grew up on a farm in Wilson County. He moved houses for a living, he repaired machinery and he built equipment, but he had a vision. And he didn’t ignore that vision,” she said.

“To him, work was a pleasure; he was following his bliss.”

arts@dailytarheel.com