Augustana University’s art gallery features ‘Dick Termes: The Total Picture’

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (Dakota News Now) - The Eide/Dalrymple Gallery at Augustana University opened “Dick Termes: The Total Picture,” which is on view through Friday, Oct. 7.

The public will have two opportunities to hear one of South Dakota’s most iconic artists speak about his work. A keynote lecture will be held from 3-4 p.m., on Oct. 7, in the Fryxell Humanities Center #123, as a part of the South Dakota Art Educators’ annual conference. Termes will also speak in the gallery at a reception in the evening from 7-9 p.m., with an artist gallery talk at 7:30 p.m., which is open and free to the public.

While working on a master’s degree at the University of Wyoming and a Master of Fine Arts at Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, California, Termes developed a 6-point perspective drawing system. This enables him to capture complete scenes onto spherical canvases that read correctly to the viewer from every angle.

“The visual world is not limited to a rectangle, so why should our visual art be?” noted Termes. “Termespheres, as my work has come to be known, free the artistic mind from the limits of the picture frame and allow for the construction of complete and complex artistic environments — realistic or imagined.”

Termes was raised in the Black Hills of South Dakota and returned to live there after teaching in Oregon and Wyoming. Termespheres have been sold all over the world, and Termes has been in frequent demand for lectures and workshops throughout the United States and abroad.

In the Eide/Dalrymple Gallery exhibition, 24 termespheres hang at eye level from ceiling motors that slowly turn the artwork, which creates interesting optical illusions for the viewer. Although the image is painted on the outside of the convex sphere, the vantage point continuously changes. The rotation also may appear to reverse direction, giving the sensation that the viewer is inside the painting, viewing the concave surface of the inside of the rotating sphere.

This exhibition, with accompanying workshops and lectures, is sponsored in part by a Touring Arts Grant through the South Dakota Arts Council, which is supported with funds from the State of South Dakota through the Department of Tourism and National Endowment for the Arts.