Termes Thoughts

CAPTURED WORLD POLYHEDRA

When I created these polyhedron paintings, my interest was in getting the concept of the six-point perspective into a reproducible form. At that time I wasn’t able to reproduce the spherical paintings as spheres so the best next thing was to flatten the spheres into polyhedron so they could be reproduced.

I wanted a similar concept to be on these polyhedra as was on the sphere. I also wanted the six-point perspective to look like it belonged on the different polyhedron. This meant I wanted the geometry of the perspective to fit with the geometry of the polyhedron. How do you get six equal distant points to fit in a sound way on the five regular polyhedron? The six equal distant points that I use on the sphere geometrically are equal to the six points or vertices of the octahedron. The Octahedron is a polyhedron that has eight equilateral triangles which make up its faces and these triangles come together into six junctions or vertices. My job was to see how these six points would fit into the other four regular polyhedra. After some study I found they do. I found out many people already knew they fit together but none of them were getting them to fit so that their drawing would look good so, at least got to that point first. In making this study I learned a great deal of new information on just how exciting the study of polyhedron was. It has turned into a couple of different workshops I offer to math and art classes. The following are examples of what I got from this thinking.

CUBE WITH FOUR (THREE TWISTED) MOEBIUS INSIDE

I created this sculpture around 1972. It was made from one inch metal cubical tubing welded together to make a stable two foot cube. From one corner a rod was welded so it could be displayed from a corner as the bottom. Holes were then drilled into the metal about an eight of an inch apart. Clear plastic line was woven into these holes and stretched around to three different edges of the cube. These three edges were going in three different directions, Up and down, north and south and east and west. The result was three bands of these triple twisted patterns floating inside the cube. I only strung these lines from the center one third of the edges of the cube. Something special goes on with the geometry because not one of the patterns created from this touched each other. My question to this day is, would this not touching have happened if I would have continued each of these bands out to the corners?

This three twisted band which three are in this cube led me into another form I played with. Adding a little dimension to this band turns it into what is called the Penrose Tribar. (see illustration) This is an illusion that Roger Penrose invented and M.C. Escher explored. The Penrose Tribar is an impossible structure only possible as a drawing. Escher played with this structure when he created ASCENDING AND DESCENDING which shows people going up a stairway and coming right back to the bottom even though the people have gone only up the stairs. WATERFALL also uses the Tribar to show waterfalls that fall and fall but somehow come back to where they began.



I would like to make a comparison with this impossible cubical structure. The drawing below shows how I progress from this cubical structure to an impossible cylinder structure. What do you think? Is it the same illustration except in cylinder form?

I believe most of my ideas come from art pieces I have done in the past. Ideas grow from ideas.

Ideas also come from other artist’s work and from studying geometry of the sphere and also from theories in Science that I read.

Many building interiors also have inspired my art. I have done a whole series of Famous Interiors of places like Notre Dame, Saint Chappell, St. Denis, Paris Opera in France, Blue Mosque, Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, St. Peters and the Pantheon in Rome, Stone Stonehenge and The Globe Theater in England. The Matthews Opera House that I am now working on is part of this series.

Some of my ideas grow from my subconscious mind. I sometimes paint a loose abstract painting with no image in mind. The patterns and colors stimulate images and ideas. I just have to be brave enough to follow my intuition for these images. It is fun to see what ideas are hidden within my mind.

Why does the Termesphere seem to flip and read like it was a concave surface and the motion reverse? My opinion is this: all illusions work because the mind is used to one thing and the designer or artist pushes the image away from that normality. The illusion happens when the mind pushes it back to what it thinks is normal. With the Termesphere, your mind wants to be on the inside of this image to have it be normal. The normal visual world around us is, to our minds, concave. Our minds will push the sphere image, convex, back from the outside of the sphere to the inside, concave. The realism is important for this illusion to happen because we feel like we are more in a normal world with realism. The abstract or geometrically painted spheres can just be that, paint on a sphere. Why is the faster motion important? That is a little harder for me but I think it has to do with you being able to pull the total image together and not think of it as pieces of pictures. When it is all one scene, we know that it is like the world that is always outside of us and we know that scene is on the concave.

You might think this is a fact when you talk to many artists. Why can’t a painting idea be created in three dimensional space? Why do you have to take six-point perspective back to the flat surface? What if the idea works best in three dimensions?

Just because we would like all things to fit in books doesn’t mean all things have to. You know, we live in a three dimensional world, not the two dimension of the book. I think also many artists wanted to be able to reproduce their ideas for more sales and it is much harder to reproduce in the third dimension. That, maybe could have a lot to do with how they wanted their images to turn out.

When I was at Otis Art Institute in Los Angels I was ask by one of my fellow students, when was I going to “Get serious and get back to the Flat Surface”. I am pretty glad I didn’t get serious.

If math is the study of patterns, my work is very much related. When every line one draws is related to the first line you drew, there is some connection to Math. When the realism you draw grows out of a geometry grid, there is some connection.

When I use the six-point perspective, which is six equal distant points on the sphere, and all lines must always extend to two opposite poles, there is math in this. When every cubical structure I draw must extend to all six equal distant points there is some connection to math. Every cubical line I draw on the sphere is a part of a greater circle.

When the realistic world around you fits into this system of perspective, which all-cubical worlds do, that is mathematics. Many artists find their work fits with other disciplines, my work seems to go over very well with mathematicians.