Life’s Ups and Downs
This Termesphere® is called LIFE’S UPS AND DOWNS. It is a 16” diameter sphere which played off of a 15th century stairway in India that helped people get to a source of water far below. These stairways interested me because they didn’t just go straight up but rather up and out with each new step. This helped more people get started on the top and focused them to the smaller area down where the water was. It must have been a little crowded down there. If you look at the image of this sphere you will see that. As you go up to the next level you gain more and more stairs. It was a great challenge to my perspective system and to me to figure out how you do this. It is one thing to just spread out normal stairs as you go up and out but to go up and have this many choices of which way to go added another complexity to the painting.
It is fun when playing with a new idea like this to try to figure out how you use it to say something you want to talk about. I used it for this reason. I have humans working their way from the bottom world to the top. Along the way they find evil monsters under many of the stairways. They have to get by these evil creatures or confront them. Sometimes we have to go sideways or even back down the stairs to find the proper way to continue life’s progress., We all have to find out own way.
Here is a youtube video that shows this sphere in motion.
It is traveling with the South Dakota Governor’s 5th Biennial Art Exhibition to three museums in South Dakota, the Dahl Fine Arts Center, the South Dakota Art Museum and the Sioux Falls Washington Pavilion.