so about josh simpson

[thespian.livejournal.com]

Josh Simpson is our artist guest of honour in 2011. I had, like many of you, never heard of the guy. So I looked him up online. His stuff was quite pretty, and I thought it might be interesting to see.

Today, Jack, the div head Guest Liaison person, and I went to brunch in Cambridge (for we are here in Somerville, Land of No Water). At the end of brunch he asked me if I wanted to go out to his next plan, a talk and reception by Josh at the Fuller Craft Museum.

I am so glad that I went.

Simpson's work is lovely in photos (as you can see here,
in these pictures of the exhibition, taken by Jack), but it is breathtakingly beautiful in person. Some pieces of it can simply never be captured on film the way they appear in front of you. I wound up at one point sticking my head behind a display because the light that was on it was fine, but the way the piece *glowed* from behind was very much like looking at one of those sunsets you can never describe to someone again.

Pieces were very tactile, and several of them were available to actually be touched with white cotton gloves. I think that many people will want to participate if we offer the chance to touch the artists' work next year. I wanted to run my fingers over many of them that I wasn't supposed to (I didn't, honest. by cramming my hands in my pockets :-)).

In addition, he's an incredibly articulate, talkative, engaging person. His talk was sciencey in all the best ways, and how he is combining some pretty pure science with artistic vision was great to hear. You can see some of his art and how he works, in this short section of Defying Gravity, a documentary on him making a 'megaplanet' (see his planets here).

I was looking forward to him being our guest next year, but now I'm incredibly excited about him coming to Arisia.

(he admitted he might not be able to stay the entire Monday of Arisia, because he has a 9-year-old boy. His wife, Cady Coleman, can't help just then because she's an astronaut and she'll be on the space station at the time. chaiya, our illustrious conchair, got outright glowy talking to an astronaut!)

- Stephanie
marketing at arisia.org