If you want to find an almost magical place, off the beaten path, where time, space, color and perspective take a new direction, you need only step into the Termesphere® Gallery in Spearfish, South Dakota.
Tucked among tall trees and thick foliage sits a fascinating house, almost as unique as the artist who lives in it.
When I arrived, I was welcomed by Dick Termes, a smiling, white-haired, whiskered gentleman, coming down the wooden walkway of a multi-leveled Geo-dome. He must have noticed my look of surprise seeing this type of structure here in South Dakota.
With a childish twinkle in his eye, he smiled, saying, “Yes, it is a bit out of the ordinary for the Black Hills but it’s home to us.”
Years ago, Dick had met Buckminster Fuller, the inventor of the geodesic dome and was fascinated with the idea. Needing a place to display his art, Dick built the first geo-structure, later adding additions for a gallery, workshop, and family home.
But the true wonder of the place is revealed when you step through the Termesphere® Gallery’s front door. Like a portal into an unbelievable new universe, I entered a room filled with spheres of all sizes. They are everywhere!
Like Planets Floating In Space
Like unknown planets floating in space, they are suspended from the high dome ceiling in a rainbow of colors and patterns and scattered along the walls with amazing designs. This is Dick Termes’ artwork.
It truly took my breath away and I couldn’t say a word until I heard a quiet giggle from behind me and Dick say, “Welcome to my world of 6 Point Perspective.”
Termes is a unique artist whose work has been recognized all over the United States, Europe, and Japan. With hundreds of major pieces on display, he is unlike any other painter, for his canvases are spheres.
“I pick a point on a ball and then decide where I want the ‘rotating point,’ or center of the sphere to be,” Dick said in describing his 6 Point Perspective.
“This determines the perspective one has if the person is standing inside the sphere. The 6 points are then directly above, below, in front, behind and to each side, equally spaced. I want to expand the perspective in order to capture more and more of the visual world,” he added.
All 6 Point perspective, drawings and paintings reveal a view encompassing the full 360 degrees in all directions. “You start with geometry and work to design realism,” he said.
“It’s as if you are put a transparent sphere on your head and then paint what you see,” he said, “Sometimes I’m inside the ball looking out so when I’m finished, the viewer has to decide if they are gazing into the sphere or looking out from within… or maybe even through it to beyond.”
From Art School To The Termesphere®
Termes taught school for several years in Oregon, mostly art classes but also biology and mechanical drawing. He moved to Sheridan, Wyoming, and continued teaching, but after two years, resigned and headed to the University of Wyoming where he got a master’s degree in art in 1968.
He then attended Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles for a master’s degree in fine arts.
But South Dakota was home, where his family still lived, so he returned to the Black Hills. For more than 50 years, he has created his unique sphere art. He’s also spent that time giving workshops and doing lectures on his 6 Point Perspective.
Dick led me out back of the gallery, where we wandered around his odd-shaped group of buildings.
His workshop was another round high-ceiling room overflowing with drawings, photos, and what seemed like zillions of assorted odd boxes. Huge sacks filled with both white and clear globes of all sizes hung suspended from hooks overhead. A drawing of Einstein hung above his cluttered desk.
“This is where I create and paint,” he said, pointing to a small worktable spattered in a rainbow of dried paint drops.
Brushes of all sizes and shapes, stacked inside mason jars surrounded the tabletop and I felt like I had almost stepped inside one of Dick’s spheres…the workshop filled up my eyes 360 degrees.
As we returned again to the Gallery, I took one last breathtaking look in the sphere-filled room, surrounded by the artwork that played with my mind as well as my eyes.
Now after my time talking with Dick, I looked at the globes and began to see both into and around each scene… as if the image changed from concave to convex before my eyes, depending on how I “let” my mind view it.
Ah, The Wonderous Detail
Here was Norte Dame Cathedral on a sphere, wondrous in even the tiniest of detail.
Another sphere swirled with rainbows that in truth were a collection of twisted boxes. Each of Dick’s pieces are unbelievably complex, painted by a masterful painter whose imagination and multifaceted techniques are beyond compare.
I purchased a tiny sphere in the gift shop that depicted famous people and places of Deadwood, capturing the bustling western mining camp and its characters as it was in 1876, just before the devastating fire of 1879.
But my true keepsake from this adventure was meeting the charming artist, discovering his unique wonderland, and stepping through the portal into the round universe of Termespheres®.
Quackgrass Sally can be reached at xptrailgal@gmail.com
