HOT SPRINGS – The Dick Termes art exhibit, Termespheres, is now on display at the Hot Springs Public Library and Chautauqua Artisans Market.
Termespheres is a play on words with Termes being Dick’s last name and his chosen blank slate being polyethylene plastic spheres.
The artist challenges the viewer to see art through a different perspective, using a sphere to create a 6 point perspective; north, south, east, west, up and down.
“I created this 6 point perspective when I was attending the University of Wyoming studying for my Master’s Degree,” recalled Termes, “we were asked to create our own subject that we would stick with the rest of our lives. Well, there was such a variety of directions I could go.”
Termes began to form an artistic plan to create a view of a subject in a fish eye lens perspective.
“Well, I presented this to my class and one student mentioned it looked like a sphere,” he said, “I thought ‘aha’ I could see the back side of what I couldn’t see with a 6 point perspective, create a grid system and plug anything into it.” And Termespheres was born.
Termes grew up in Spearfish to a father who created homes and mother who helped to stage them for sale.
“I remember I moved 18 times before I graduated High School,” laughed Termes. Each house his father built the family would live in while his mother put the finishing touches on it and then sold it when the next, grander home, was completed.
Surrounded by creative people it wasn’t long before Termes ventured into art, but art wasn’t on his mind in his youth, preferring sports over classroom time. But one teacher noticed something in him more than an athlete.
“I was in a speech class,” he recalled, “and I consistently gave really bad speeches until one time I gave a speech on art. Mrs Bumpkis asked me to stay after class. I thought I was in trouble. But she told me that was the best speech I had given and felt that art had meaning to me.”
After he digested that information he began to take art more seriously gaining degrees, success, and eventually working with the South Dakota Arts Council creating more than 20 murals across the state of South Dakota, using the process as a way to teach art students design, theory of color and more.
At the time there were not many painters in the Spearfish area so Termes felt he was filling a niche.
“I got a lot of support from the town,” he said, with art clubs hosting showings of his art and such.
His art became so well known that he actually found himself speaking at conferences… for math.
“I have spoken at more math conferences than art,” he laughed. “There is so much geometry and playing with geometry in my art.”
His art varies from a made up world, surrealistic world and the real world.
“But my favorite subject is famous buildings,” he said. Places such as the Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, The Shakespeare Globe Theater in London, the La Fonda Hotel in Santa Fe, and more.
Now at 82 his love for the art has not dimmed, however he admits that the most difficult part now is “keeping track of what I am doing”.
Twelve Termespheres are on display at the Hot Springs Public Library and 2 Termespheres are on display at Chautauqua Artisans Market.
Additionally, there will be a virtual reality experience available at Chautauqua Artisans Market Sept. 22 - Oct. 13, Wednesdays 10noon as well as Wednesdays, Saturdays, Sundays, 1:303:30. The virtual experience will also be available at the Hot Springs Public Library on Fridays 3-4:30.
Public presentations by Dick Termes will be held October 2 at Pine Hills Retirement Community from 2-3 PM and at the Hot Springs Public Library from 5:30-6:30.
The Termesphere exhibit is hosted by Chautauqua Craftsmen & Artisans of the Black Hills through a generous donation from Roger and Teresa Hubregtse matching a SD Arts Council artist’s grant.
For more information on Dick Termes, his art and his works, visit termespheres.