Flashbacks: Echoes of Past Issues
N C L R ONLINE
73
courtesy of Gallery C
2013 JAMES APPLEWHITE POETRY PRIZE FINALIST
Blue Bottles By Glenis Gale Redmond
See them limbs out yonder? They can bear the brunt. Branch the blue bottles there. Better to house a demon in glass. Siphon hate. Draw the haints. Never anoint their stir with worry. ’Cause they walk this world to and fro like tired don’t exist. Better to offer trouble a place to dwell, because everythang is drawn to the light ’specially evil.
BottleCap (painted metal, 29x13) by Vollis Simpson
Vollis Simpson (1919–2013) spent his entire life in Lucama, NC. His fascination with windpowered machines began in World War II. Stationed with the Army Air Corps in Saipan, he built a wind-powered washing machine out of junked parts of a B52 bomber. After the war, Simpson opened a machinery repair shop and built devices for his house-moving business. Upon retirement, he began creating large-scale (some as tall and wide as 60 feet) wind-powered towers built from parts leftover in his repair shop and found at the junkyard. These towers were installed on the family farm. Recognition soon followed, and his works were hailed as visionary examples of folk or outsider art. Art critics likened his whimsical creations to children’s toys known as whirligigs. His works have been exhibited in in such venues as the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, the American Folk Art Museum in Manhattan, and the North Carolina Museum of Art. Simpson was commissioned by the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta to create works that remain on permanent display at the site. In 2011, Simpson received the North Carolina Award, the state’s highest civilian honor, and in 2013, his whirligig creations were designated the official folk art of the state of North Carolina. Also in 2013, the city of Wilson, NC, opened the Vollis Simpson Whirligig Park. See more of his work at Gallery C in Raleigh, NC.
Glenis Gale Redmond, a native of Greenville, SC, graduated from Erskine College in Due West, SC, and received her MFA in poetry from Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, NC. She is a Cave Canem Fellow, and she has received a North Carolina Literary Fellowship from the North Carolina Arts Council. She has also served as a trustee on the North Carolina Humanities Council. Her latest poetry collection is Under the Sun (Main Street Rag, 2008). See her poem “Carolinese,” a semifinalist in the 2011 Applewhite competition, in NCLR 2012 and her poem “Blanc,” another finalist in the 2013 Applewhite competition, in NCLR 2014.