(1919 - 2013)
Vollis Simpson was an American self-taught folk artist and intuitive engineer from Lucama, North Carolina, best known for his monumental wind-powered sculptures, or "whirligigs." Born into a farming family of twelve children, Simpson developed a lifelong understanding of mechanics by repairing farm equipment, helping move buildings, and working with machinery from an early age. During World War II, while serving with the U.S. Army Air Corps on Saipan, he encountered the scale and force of military equipment firsthand, an experience that deepened his fascination with motion, balance, and mechanical possibility.After returning home, Simpson opened a repair and machine shop, fixing farm tools, factory equipment, cars, trucks, and even moving buildings. Over decades, he collected salvaged materials, car parts, airplane components, reflectors, fans, road signs, and industrial remnants, saving what others discarded because he saw continued usefulness in it. In retirement, those stored materials became the foundation for more than thirty large-scale kinetic works, some reaching sixty feet tall and weighing several tons. Though the art world came to call them whirligigs, Simpson preferred the simpler word "windmills."
Simpson's work transformed everyday scrap into towering, colorful constructions animated by wind, light, sound, and movement. His sculptures drew national and international attention, appearing in museum collections, public installations, and commissions including works for the American Visionary Art Museum and the 1996 Summer Olympics. Today, many of his restored whirligigs are preserved at the Vollis Simpson Whirligig Park in Wilson, North Carolina, where they continue to celebrate Simpson's ingenuity, humor, and belief in making things "people could enjoy and for the children."
