joe simms – orange studio artist

The Orange Studio is an Arts Center program for adult artists with mental illness and/or learning disabilities. The Arts Center provides the artists with studio space, art supplies and artistic support for the creation of their work. Part of this support is to assist these artists with exhibiting and marketing their work, which develops the artist’s self-confidence and enhances the esteem in which our society holds its disabled citizens. The artists are assured a secure and productive place to paint, draw, and create. Artists accepted into the Orange Studio are exceptional artists of serious intent and must be juried-in by portfolio review. Visit them in their studio located in the rear of our building. When their work is sold, half of the proceeds go to the artist, and the other half helps to fund the program.

Joe SImms has lived in the countryside of Orange County all his life. He has created art since he was 14 years old. He likes to created from whatever is in his head, and is usually working on a fantastical universe of machines, plants, people, animals, and houses. Joe also does wood sculptures and embroideries.

Born in 1942, Joe did not receive the special care he deserved. Up until the 1960s, African-American children in Orange County attended “grading” school in place of the the white children’s elementary. Joe, being severely dyslexic, struggled here and after 2nd grade was forced to surrender home to help his widowed mother. Isolated, but safe, Joe lived out the greater extent of his life away from the world.

Joe’s mother has since passed away, but the rest of Joe’s family is still taking great care of him. Joe’s mind has flourished in his time at the Arts Center. Where previously he wouldn’t have even attempted a conversation with someone unfamiliar to him, he now feels confident to approach new people as he did in 2006 for NYC’s Outsider Art Fair.