Blue New Mexico Glass
"As an artist I have toured and photographed nuclear power plants. One of the most profoundly fascinating things I witnessed was Cherenkov radiation, which appears as an incredibly pure blue light emitted from uranium fuel rods glowing below 40 feet of crystal clear water within the core of a nuclear reactor.
This radioactive light is as beautiful to me as a candle flame must be to a moth. I resolved somehow to re-create that intense blue color in my glass.
New Mexico glass is as close as I can get to the color of Cherenkov radiation; it also reminds me of the sky on a perfect summer night. I had never been to New Mexico when I created this glass, but that was how I imagined the color. Sometimes the patterning looks like the ocean during a storm, with swirling waters and crashing waves. At other times, I can make it look like a Hubble Space Telescope photo taken of another galaxy.
I make New Mexico glass by melting metallic silver onto the molten surface of a dark glass. As I form each piece, I carefully control the temperature and flow of oxygen and propane into the glass furnace, thereby enhancing and enriching the color. If you hold one of these pieces up to a bright light, instead of the peacock blue color you will see that it transmits red or dark purple - a distinctive property of dichroic glass.”
“Josh’s glasswork is not only created of the same cosmic material that produced us, its creation follows a very similar path: a small gathering of selected materials, mixed in a high temperature environment, molded and shaped by laws of physics, and finally left to cool slowly over long periods of time.”
— Craig Langlois
Chief Experience Officer, Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, MA
Video Gallery
Josh Simpson and his assistants Jay Brown and Tucker Litchfield make a Blue New Mexico Wine Goblet.
Watch Josh & his crew make a Hyperspace Platter.