PIERRE — Looking at the world through a sphere can give a person a unique perspective just as painting the world on a sphere has given Spearfish artist Dick Termes an “inside-out” view on life.

Termes, the creator of Termespheres art, is an internationally acclaimed artist whose work is one-of-a-kind spherical paintings.

“His work is such a unique form of art,” the South Dakota Discovery Center’s executive director Kristie Maher said. “He is recognized as a master artist. It’s great that South Dakota kids to get to be that close to a world-recognized artist.”

Shawna Bleecker | Capital Journal Stanley County Elementary School second-grader Alex Singleton (left) listens and learns about Termespheres from the art-form creator Dick Termes Friday afternoon at the South Dakota Discovery Center

According to Termes’ Web site, “What you are seeing when you look at a Termesphere painting is an optical illusion. An inside-out view of the total physical world around you on the outside surface of a hanging and rotating sphere.”

Termespheres capture the all-around visual world from one revolving point in space, so no matter which direction the eye looks at the sphere — from above, below or from the side — the image looks correct.

“It is the complete environment around you,” said Termes, who opted to paint an entire environment as opposed to a small portion like most artists do.

Friday afternoon Termes taught a couple of local children the art of drawing with a 12-point perspective. The 12-point perspective gives artists a central point on paper to draw from and provides a grid to show a balance of distance in art.

“You just make boxes,” Lindsey Bishop said as if the concept was old news to her. “You just follow the lines on the grid.”

“It’s pretty neat,” said 11-year-old Marcella Lees. “It is easier to draw with grid lines.”

“It was really neat to hear him explain the spheres,” said area mother Michelle Lees, who brought her children to the event. “I love the way he simplified the perspective. It is not an easy thing to teach.”

Second-grade Stanley County G.O.L.D. student Slader Tople, 7, enjoyed putting together one of Termes’ tetrahedron puzzle exhibits, which also are on display.

“It looks like you’re in it watching the baseball games,” he said. “It’s pretty cool!”

The Termesphere exhibit, sponsored in part by the South Dakota Arts Council, will be on display at the South Dakota Discovery Center through the month of December.

For those who missed a learning opportunity with the artist Termes himself, don’t worry, he will be back.

“He doesn’t come annually,” Maher said. “But we have had him come several times over the past 14 years.”

“When people look at my artwork I hope they walk away with an awareness of the total visual space,” Termes said. “I want to have people be aware of the big picture. That’s a lot to ask from one piece of art.”

Or is it?

Spearfish artist Dick Termes has had one of his painted globes, called Termespheres, picked to illustrate the French edition reprinting of Steven Hawking’s best-seller, “A Brief History of Time.”

Although Termes has work in the “Mathematiques et Arts” exhibit that has traveled Europe since 2005, publishers picked another piece for the famed scientist’s book. Maybe it was the name: “The Big Bang.”

Hawking, 67, is the renowned British theoretical physicist who has made science popular beyond researchers. He has reached a worldwide audience from a wheelchair, nearly paralyzed by muscular dystrophy.

Termespheres hang at the Glasgow Science Center in Scotland, the Singapore Science Center, and the Rapid City Public Library, Dahl Art Center and Rushmore Plaza Civic Center.

Termes received the 1999 Governor’s Award for Distinction in Creative Achievement.

Some of his work is displayed at Heron’s Flight Studio, a new Rapid City gallery at 211 Founders Park Drive. His home studio, where you can see the original “Big Bang,” is at 1920 Christensen Road in Spearfish.

Almost everything in Dick Termes’ world is round – the sun breaking through morning haze, the tennis ball he batted back and forth before breakfast, the four geodesic domes in which he lives and works.

For more than 30 years, Termes has eschewed traditional flat canvases to create his art on polycarbonate globes he calls “Termespheres.” He came up with the idea while completing his master’s degree at UW in the late 1960s, and it has been his passion ever since. Termes estimates he has painted more than 200 major spheres so far – about a third of those by commission – and his work is displayed internationally, from North Pole High School in Alaska to the Tokyo Museum in Japan.

“In art, the most important thing to find is an original thing to do,” he says. “There have been lots of paintings done over thousands of years, most on flat surfaces. The sphere adds a whole new set of geometries that fits with the real world better than a flat surface. Three-dimensional space is what we live in.”

“I think this is a unique way to talk about life and a universal way to talk about the beginning and terminus of life.” Termes said. This past year he has had one man shows at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, at the Grace Museum in Abilene, Texas and at Cal State University in Bakersfield. Next week the termespheres will be shipped to the University of South Alabama in Mobile and the Eastern Shore Art Center in Fairhope, Ala. Next they will go to the County College North East at Ft. Worth, Texas, Missouri Western State College in St. Joseph and to Evansville Museum in Indiana.

For those of us who want to attempt this style of painting he has a booklet on the 6 Point Perspective he uses to create his spheres.. although the concept is clear, getting you head around painting in a 6 point perspective on a globe takes some doing!

Was there anyone in particular that influenced you to choose this path of painting?
There were a number of artists and other people that influenced me in my art form. M.C. Escher of course influenced me with his ideas connecting illusions with the realistic world. He also had a wonderful tightness l liked in painting and drawing. I seemed to run into his work with every new idea I came up with. Bucky Fuller excited me with his three dimensional geometries and his philosophies.. Seurat help make science and art come together for me.. Picasso and Klee helped me to know a painting is its own thing and not a copy of something and Victor Flach, an instructor from University of Wyoming taught me to put thinking into my work.

What made you choose a sphere to paint on rather than the traditional canvas?
The sphere became important to me because I needed an endless canvas to create endless ideas, ideas that showed north, east, south, west, up and down directions. The sphere also gave me a new set of geometric substructures that I could use and explore in my paintings. The geometry of the sphere and the flat surface are totally different. It was an area that had not been explored before by a painter.

How long have you been painting on spheres?
I have been painting on the sphere since 1968-9. I started painting flat work in High School in 1958.

Are there other 3 dimensional shapes you have used?
I have explored the regular polyhedra which consist of the tetrahedron, octahedron, hexahedron, dodecahedron and the icosahedron. Also I have explored the rhombic dodecahedron and other complicated polyhedra. What is interesting about painting on these different enclosed forms is their geometries for me seem to dictate where the subject goes. My interest was to apply my six point perspective to each of these forms and be able to create up, down and all around worlds out of them. These polyhedra would make it possible to reproduce my ideas. The sphere was very hard to reproduce in those early years. The cylinder has also been fun to explore and the moebius strip both create art you would never expect.

Can you explain in “layman’s terms” how you go about painting using the six-point perspective system?
The easiest way to explain my six point perspective is to imagine you are inside a beautiful building like Notre Dame in Paris or Hagia Sophia. You take along with you a transparent sphere. You crawl inside a transparent sphere. With you head in the center you copy everything you see outside the sphere onto the surface of the sphere. As soon as you have copied everything you move to the outside of the spherical painting to look at what you painted. As I can’t get inside all of the spheres I paint I had to come up with a system to create these ideas from the outside of the sphere. This part of my site helps to explain that perspective system from one through six point perspective.

How do you make your Termespheres? Do you paint directly onto the globe?
I use to make my spherical canvases out of fiberglass and others out of Styrofoam but now I buy light fixtures from the factory. These plastic spheres are made out of polyethylene and polycarbonate plastics and are much stronger and more spherical. I have to sandpaper the surface of the sphere to rough it up before I gesso it. Also I usually have to fill the seam to make it a perfect sphere.

Do you paint in oil or acrylics?
I use Acrylics because I need something that will dry faster so I can turn the sphere to work on the back side of the sphere.

What type of protective lacquer do you use if any on the finished product?
When I am finished with the acrylic paint on the sphere I usually spray with an acrylic matte or gloss finish.

Normal painters use an easel. What type of prop do you use to steady the sphere while painting?
The sphere is held in a padded cylinder while I paint on it. This easel is different as it also can spin because motion is very important to my work. I also can adjust the height of the easel so the height is just right for sitting or standing.

Have you ever treated the sphere as a 3 dimensional canvas, where the subjects you painted have different depths in the sphere?
Sometimes I have painted on the inside of the sphere when it is to be out in the elements outside. This protects the paint some. I have played with black and transparent spheres so you can look through the sphere and see the back side along with the front side. I have used mirrors inside spheres and hemisphere, I call them hemismirrors. I have played a little with spheres within spheres for different effects.

Are there different ways of displaying your spheres? Such as a tabletop prop that you can use to rotate the spheres?
Most of the time I hang the spheres from ceiling motors so I can control the motion speed. Some spheres I have mounted from below so they can come off of a pedestal. An outside sphere at the Law Enforcement Academy in Wyoming is mounted from below. So is a piece I did for Coca Cola Corporation.

They look very complex and time consuming. How long does it take for you to finish a project?
Most of my spheres take two to three months. The larger ones, can take 9 months.

What makes a good subject for a Termesphere?
In order to be honest to the sphere, the subjects for the spheres have to talk about spherical ideas. I have painted a variety of subjects from the interiors of great architecture.

What is the project you are working on at the moment?
I am working on three different spheres at this moment. STONEHENGE, where I am standing in the middle of the monoliths and turning in a circle. Wonderful geometry comes from the Sun and the Moon on the horizon. I think it is exciting that early man was so curious about the order of the universe.

You have painted hundreds of Termespheres. What is there that you still want to explore and that keeps you painting on spheres?
You know, I don’t think of it as painting on spheres. I think of it as painting in a different dimension, a dimension that allow total worlds around you, like the world we live in. This dimension has as much or more to say than the flat surface and look how many paintings have been done on the flat surface. Once you have played in this dimension it is very hard to come back to the flat world. Have you read the Flatlanders?

The flat artist allows the viewer to look into his or her window, I allow people to come in through the window and turn around and see the whole room, even the people outside the window. The computer people are now allowing people to crawl through the window, look around in a circle and take a walk in that room and even enter into other rooms.

How do you see your work evolving in the future?
Every day when I get up I think about what is the most important thing I can do for that day in case it is my last day. Of course if I knew where my work was going I wouldn’t have to explore to find it, right? So, I don’t know where I am going. I just go in circles anyway. That’s kind of a joke, or is it?