When a Mural Becomes a Window: Orbital Flux at the Honors College
Article and photos by Theo Nims
Content
On a crisp February morning, students passing through the Commonwealth Honors College building will encounter something alive on the wall above the staircase leading to Roots Café. The new mural by Honors Lecturer John Simpson, titled “Orbital Flux”, is a sprawling, biomorphic composition that seems to pulse with energy. The mural has arrived as both decoration and an invitation.
What do you see? Why do you see that?
The mural is born from Simpson's decades-long exploration of consciousness and interconnectedness; embodying the creative philosophy Simpson teaches in his popular course, “Art and Springfield's Urban Environment”. Through sweeping curves, celestial imagery, and an almost Dalí-esque fluidity, Simpson has translated what he calls "orbital flux," the invisible forces that animate our world, into bold, tactile form.
"It's possible to depict a living force and spiritual forms two-dimensionally with the use of material properties," Simpson explained during an interview about the piece. "The consciousness of handling, of preparation… It's about your own mind… What do you see? Why do you see that?"
Forty-Five Years of Thinking
Simpson's artistic practice spans nearly half a century. The mural represents the culmination of continuous reflection on a single animating question:
“What connects everything?”
His answer, rendered across the wall in the Honors College building, is both visual and philosophical at once.
My own eye connected the piece to photographs from the James Webb Space Telescope, but just as I saw the celestial in Simpson’s work, I also found the microscopic. Simpson's vocabulary of both visually cellular and cosmological forms suggests that the microscopic and the celestial are expressions of a single universal science. A viewer might see geological formations, biological processes, or the swirling void of deep space. All interpretations coexist.
This is certainly an intentional ambiguity. Simpson has long believed that "the air is alive," not metaphorically, but as a truth that is philosophical and spiritual. His teaching emphasizes this interconnectedness, building an environment in which a stray thought can clear the atmosphere and a powerful idea can change the world. The mural asks viewers to sense that possibility themselves.
What Students Will See
For both the students in Simpson's course and the broader campus community, this new mural offers something increasingly rare: a genuine encounter with artistic vision that doesn’t give away any easy answers. “Orbital Flux” does not depict a scene, nor does it illustrate a clear message. It simply asks, “What is it that you see?”
Simpson himself resists singular interpretation. "If a student seeing the mural for the first time asked, 'What is this really about', I would tell them, ‘It's about your own consciousness’”.
This is not evasion. It is the core of Simpson's teaching philosophy. Art changes the quality of life in the urban environment not by imposing meaning, but by creating the capacity for fresh perception and interpretation. A mural becomes a mirror, a window, a view that depends on who looks at it.
As students pass the mural daily, experiencing it in changing light and across seasons, they will encounter something Simpson has spent forty-five years perfecting: the art of seeing consciousness itself.
In a university environment saturated with information and instruction, that may be the most radical gift of all.
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Theo Nims
