SD Day 3 - Sad Dogs, Sharpshooters, and Spheres
Today my mom and I started out by getting some coffee for me at a very fittingly named cafe called Essence of Coffee. They had a really sweet, cozy breakfast joint vibe and they made a mean brew to get you going.
Since we’d spent all of yesterday go-go-going, we started our morning a little slower (though somehow by the end of the day we still managed to do an absolute ton), just walking around Rapid City and enjoying the place we’d chosen as our South Dakota home base. Our perambulating was initially inspired by a fun local feature, which is that every block of the down town area is equipped with a life size bronze statue of one of the presidents so we wanted to do a nice loop and see who we might see. Two of our favorites were an armed and dangerous Teddy Roosevelt and a William Howard Taft who seemed to have been tastefully trimmed down a bit. Interestingly they chose to honor Taft with an image of him as the first president to throw out the first pitch of a baseball game rather than as the first president to become stuck in a bathtub, which isn’t what I would have done but I guess is still respectable in its own way. We were also astonished by just how not-memorable so many of the presidents were as the likes of Benjamin Tyler and Franklin Pierce were really difficult for us to recognize but it became a fun little game for us while we walked to try to guess who everyone was.
Among all the presidents, it was nice to see the inclusion of a beautiful sculpture dedicated to the Native Peoples of this land. Based on a drawing by Ogala Sioux artist Richard Under Baggage, the piece is entitled Mitakuye Oyasin (We Are All Related) and it features a globe, a man, an eagle, a turtle, a bison, and bear (the last two are out of frame on the sides) combined together into one impressively synergistic bust.
While we strolled, we got good look at the historic Hotel Alex Johnson, a grand resort hotel built in 1927 and sort of resembling a cute German cottage stretched to gargantuan proportions. It’s famous both for being a slice of the region’s history as well as for supposedly being very spooky and haunted. Some suspect that the ghost stories really started gaining attention when master of horror Alfred Hitchcock (and star Cary Grant) stayed there while filming North By Northwest. To me though their scariest guest is probably the famous mass murderer, Ronald Reagan.
While much less classically artistic compared to the sculptures and the hotel, I was nonetheless pretty amused that this silly tank top was front and center in one of the window displays we passed by:
honestly not bad advice
Next we traveled through a fantastically chaotic public art space called Art Alley, a functional alleyway that is exempt from city graffiti laws because the walls themselves are all consenting private property. The space is fun mix of traditional graffiti, oil paintings, chalk drawings, and whatever medium local artists want to experiment with, and it changes constantly with artists painting and drawing all over each other’s works in bright vibrant visual cacophony. It’s loosely curated by a guild of local artists, and a permit does have to be acquired to put your work up on the wall, but it’s still a really cool, fiercely independent project that adds a bit of punk aesthetic to the historic city.
Out the other end of the Art Alley, the next place we stopped was a little art gallery that we went into just on a whim, but it ended up being one of our favorite spots we visited. The Suzie Cappa Art Center combines my two biggest passions in life: art and providing aid and opportunity to the disabled. Named in honor of a local artist, Suzie Cappa, who rose to be a prominent artist who refused to be put into a box or ignored just because she also had developmental disabilities. The center now employs 20 full time artists and several part time artists, who have a variety of disabilities but a shared interest in making beautiful things. The artists can work in whatever medium inspires them, and the center provides the materials and a platform for them to sell the finished works they feel able to part with. It’s very empowering, and the thing that becomes clear right away is that these are artists first and whatever their disabilities may be in other facets of their life they truly deserve this showcase of their hard work, creativity, and talents. Talent and vision can pop up in any and every community and it’s a shame to think that without a place like this, biases and preconceptions about the disabled might otherwise keep them from sharing their skills with a wider audience. Truly it was a delight to see those misconceptions turned on their head as soon as we walked in and saw a wild installation of white painted furniture decorated with vibrant, abstract, silly, and brilliant sticker art placed there by artists and visitors. At first it looks random, but then patterns shapes and images start popping up revealing all kinds of hidden surprises, essentially the experience you’ll feel walking through the whole gallery wonderfully distilled in a single image.
Some highlights for me included: a dense geometric abstraction built by an artist named Maureen Conley; a surreal, and sassy moon in a really lovely shade of nighttime sky by an artist named Linda Shafer; a lovely minimalist woven landscape by an artist whose name I sadly didn’t catch; Some impressive homemade stuffed animals by an artist named Richard; sweeping landscapes by an artist named Cookie; a sweetly surreal imagining of Jurassic Park, SD by an artist named Matt; an abstract piece with a hauntingly cheerful face floating above it by another artist whose name I missed; a fantastic pen-and-ink cow by Ramona Spotted Eagle that looks like something out of a vintage cartoon; and an impressionistic landscape by Jeff McGlade, who cites Vincent Van Gogh as his biggest inspiration.
My favorite pieces though were unlike anything I’d every seen before: gloriously chaotic wigs made out of twisted pipe cleaners, placed on a styrofoam head and affixed to abstract expressionist paintings all done by an artist with Down Syndrome named Jill Holien. They’re really tremendous, original, and so full of life. Ironically for someone who designs wigs, she is totally bald, but that gives the piece a sweet sense of wish fulfillment, the hair she feels would best express her. Jill was actually working in the studio space, and when one of the staff saw how much I loved them she brought me over to say hi but she was too engrossed in her work to really acknowledge me. A true artist through and through.
Next we finished our stroll back to my car/house and drove to Rapid City’s largest Art museum: the Dahl Arts Center. When we entered, we were greeted in the lobby by a hanging three dimensional Termesphere by local favorite Dick Termes (albeit in the shape of a dodecahedron rather than a sphere) and a darkly tender mural of a young man thwarting his friend’s suicide amidst a stormy twilight background. It was not too shabby an introduction of things to come.
The first special exhibit was an astounding collection of ceramic sculptures by the Japanese artist Yoko Tenyoh Sugawara. Her works, divided into different series, all share a real warmth, tenderness, and playfulness that is truly shocking to see brought to life in stone and earthenware. The first series, my personal favorite, featured all Baby Buddhas, with adorably round expressive faces, and are perhaps some of the best examples of art actually capturing the character of babies that I’ve ever seen.
My personal favorite set was this group of Baby Buddhas reacting to various animals in a woodland setting with varying degrees of comfort from one the baby seemingly scared by dragonflies to another happily lounging with a snail on his belly:
The next series was all about trying to capture various facets of femininity, with some sculptures representing fantasies of the kind of woman the artist would like to be, self portraits of the woman she is, and portraits of other women who have shaped her life. Everything was made with such a deft loving touch, it was hard not to be impressed by her craft and moved by her emotion.
Lastly, diving into the deep end of her more fantastical impulses was a surreal series of characters wearing tall wizard (or perhaps dunce) hats with windows cut out revealing manifestations of their subconscious unspoken thoughts and feelings. These pieces were darker, but still so damn impressive in their details.
On the walls throughout this gallery space, another artist, Darrel Nelson, had his works showcased. His densely layered abstract paintings and drawings featured single motions and motifs repeated and built up into stirring kaleidoscopic images, which actually really fit in a strange, intangible way with the emotionality of Tenyoh’s sculptures.
The next special exhibit was a showcase of an artist based out of Sante Fe named Sheila Mills. Mills’ works feature oil paint and watercolor recreations of photographs she took from a moving car while driving across America. Her art exists somewhere between realist and impressionistic with thick, sludgy lines giving everything the hazy sense of memory. The exhibit is a beautiful tribute to the varied landscapes of the country, but something about the paintings also evokes a bittersweet sense of melancholy, perhaps representative of the economic turmoil that lurks behind many of these pastoral scenes. I really loved this exhibit because it’s cool to see someone take one of the oldest genres of art, landscape paintings, and do something that feels so fresh and original and with it.
My favorite pieces were an image of a suburban neighborhood gently obscured by a twisting rose bush and a billboard on a barren highway sign simply advertising “PiGS”:
Next we paid a visit to one of the Dahl’s crown jewels: The Cyclorama Mural of American Economic History. This immersive oil painting by muralist Bernard P. Thomas traces the history of American industrial history from the Puritans’ first landing up to what the artist imagined the future might look like in 1975 when the project was completed. This sweeping vision encircles the viewer around the room clocking in at a grand total of 180 feet in length. It’s a monumental accomplishment, with a wonderfully dreamlike quality as disparate moments in history coalesce and merge into one giant American narrative:
The one unfortunate part of the mural, that I’ll be honest made laugh probably more than it should have, was that either through creative license or paint fading over the years, whenever the artist tried to represent an African American, their skin had a really strangely blue-ish hue. Look most of the mural is deeply impressive, so it perhaps it’s not fair to expect an artist to be able to do everything well, but this was hilariously off-putting and unfortunately gave the impression that perhaps he’d never actually met a Black person in real life before, which I guess isn’t wildly unlikely in South Dakota in the 1970s. It also reminded me of one of my favorite anecdotes I learned in my wildly impractical study of the Irish language in college, in that the Irish word for a Black person literally translates to “blue man”, because the Irish had already been using “black man” to describe the devil long before they ever encountered someone who wasn’t pasty white, so they just opted to assign a totally different term for people of color so as to not have to sort through fixing thousands of ancient texts which would seem really racist with literal translations. I do give modern Irish scholars credit for just realizing that ancient cultures didn’t have modern conceptions of race, and so rather than trying to messily shoehorn ancient beliefs into a modern context they just sidestepped it all together. As Ireland slowly becomes a more diverse place, perhaps they’ll have to revisit this but it seems niche enough that it might just remain an amusing linguistic struggle. Let’s just hope the Blue Man Group never visits any of the small communities that still speak almost exclusively in Irish, because then that would be a real mess.
Last but not least, the largest exhibit was a 40 year retrospective of work’s from the museum’s permanent collection, tracing their journey from small local art gallery to one of the major contemporary art museums of the Plains. The exhibit was really expansive, featuring work from over 50 artist, and highlighting the variety of works the space had housed over the years ranging from traditional scenic watercolors to more avant-garde abstract compositions.
My favorites included: a piece entitled Persistence and Tradition by Arthur Amiotte which juxtaposes a take on traditional cave paintings with a more modern acrylic painting of the same scene; a minimalist ceramic sculpture of a buffalo with a mane of metal nails by Angela Behrends; crazy vibrant woven tapestries of dancing stars and terrifying fish-folk by Norwegian textile artist Grete Bodogaard; an ominous monotype print of ghostly spirits and pompous crows by Roger Broer with the wonderful “Here to Scare… The Corn!”; a humorous piece by influential Cubist Marc Chagall of two topsy-turvy lovers; a hauntingly simple graphite drawing by Janet Lauroesch which has a unique texture made by scraping the graphite across the paper so that it starts to smudge and blend into the background giving it an eerie intangible quality; a mixed media piece by Bob Miller entitled The Chosen One featuring a target practice figure enshrined with a halo; some humorous polaroids by Bob H. Miller which play with the supposed reality of photographs by carefully inserting fashion photos into pictures from rodeos and warzones which might trick the causal viewer into believing these surreal scenes actually happened; a beautiful woodblock print of a cawing crow by Robert Penn; a shockingly photorealistic painting of a trailer home by Tim Petersen that you’d never believe was pastel on paper; the inverse, a photograph by Ray Tysdale of two buffalo that you’d swear has to be a painting; a strangely stunning triptych by Linda Thorpe of gorgeously rendered chairs being carried away by the wind over a rocky sea; and two paintings done on ledger paper by famed Lakota artist Dwayne Wilcox which brings traditional Lakota imagery into the 21st century with light, playful, cartoony panache capturing in one image the grandeur of a religious ceremony and in the other the absurdity of taking a selfie.
After all our artful wandering, Mom and I had worked up quite an appetite so we stopped for lunch at a cute cafe called Harriet and Oak. They had a fun hippie vibe to them right down to a VW van parked right in the middle of the restaurant and open for seating:
I re-upped on coffee and got a fantastic Turkey and Avocado sandwich which was just jam-packed with tender, thinly sliced turkey and adorned with tomato, sprouts, cheese, and pesto. It was simple but delicious, and really hit that sweet spot of being kind of decadent but green enough that you can pretend it’s healthy.
After lunch, my mom insisted that we visit an auto repair shop because my front bumper had become somewhat detached from when I had to get towed out of the mud in Nebraska (3 posts back). We stopped at a good local place called Mel’s Auto Body, where my car was taken care of very quickly and efficiently and they were even gave us a super fair price to boot without trying to milk out for services we didn’t need. The best part of our visit though was that while we in the waiting room, we got to spend time with the receptionist’s old, pudgy clinically depressed pug. Apparently, their other pug had just passed away and this old girl was too anxious to be left home alone. I didn’t mind, finding her big sad eyes pretty adorable like something out of a cartoon, but my mom wasn’t too keen on being stuck in a room with a “creature”. Somehow animals always seem to have knack for going for the one person in the room who wants nothing to do with them, so while I was trying to get the pug to play with me, she ignored me, waddled over to Mom, and, for what seemed like the first time in a decade, boldly overcame the forces of gravity to leap (almost) into my mom’s lap. If she looks like she’s having fun in the photo, she’s actually laughing because I chose to take a picture rather than help while she was “being attacked”. Honestly the sheer improbability of that dog getting even a little air off the ground, really made this one of my absolute favorite moments from the entire trip and perhaps my single favorite photo I’ve ever taken.
With my car back in action, mom and I set sail for historic Deadwood. This famously lawless Old West town is a lot more civilized now, but it still looks very much like it would have in those wild times as the town’s architecture almost exclusively dates back to the 19th century. This makes Deadwood one of the best preserved frontier towns in the country, and as such the whole town has actually been officially designated as a National Historic Landmark. It was really something to just walk around and feel like you were in a totally different time and place.
Our first stop was the Adams Museum, Deadwood’s premier Western History museum. It certainly makes an impression when you walk in, with the opulent interior packed to the gills with western imagery including mounted animal heads and a full scale old timey general store in the corner.
The first exhibit we looked at was dedicated to some of the prominent gamblers, gunslingers, and lawmen that put the town on most people’s maps with each famous figure getting their own fantastically illustrated standee. I thought it was a great way of way right off the bat blending the real history with the larger than life personalities that have emerged over years of Western storytelling.
A small but very fun display case highlighted a brief moment in history where, during Prohibition, the Black Hills Brewing Company in an effort to not lose too much profit started bottling up soda instead. The case had one bottle from their boozy days and one bottle of Ginger Ale both with great vintage labels:
The next display was on the legacy of Chinese families in Deadwood. At the height of the Gold Rush, there were at least 250 Chinese immigrants and their families living in the town, making it much more ethnically diverse than the lily-white Old West of Hollywood. Relative to other parts of the country at the same time, there was a lot more tolerance for people of other races on the frontier because life was so hard and dangerous that basically anyone who could survive and/or provide a valuable service wasn’t going to be turned away. I don’t want to paint too rosy a picture, because I’m sure there was still a good amount of discrimination, but there at least tended to be way fewer barriers to owning property and starting a business if you were an immigrant and/or person of color than you might face elsewhere which was certainly a big draw. I loved seeing vintage photographs of big Chinese families because it’s really cool and exciting to see historical documents that paint (and prove) a different narrative than the one you’re already used to seeing. For a sweet bit of continuing history, one of the babies in the photo on the left grew up to be the highest ranked Chinese officer in the U.S. Marine Corps during WWII, so it’s neat to see events, people, and places ripple throughout history.
The next displays were all dedicated to the indigenous Lakota history in the region, highlighting both individual stories through more illustrated cut outs and broader tribal traditions with different artifacts. My favorite items included a ceremonial pipe and some excellent beaded moccasins and clothing. It is a shame that a certain Lakota good luck symbol bears an unfortunate resemblance to the swastika, though it well predates the Nazi use of the symbol. It’s pretty shocking that the Nazis as group were so horrible that they basically ruined a fairly simple geometric pattern just by association.
The next display was a sweet tribute to the children of the frontier with a big photograph of an early schoolhouse and a cute model set of a young brother and sister tending to the farm:
We made our way to the second floor of exhibits which began with some impressive geologic maps of the Black Hills. I like that if you know how to read the maps there’s a lot of history to be mined from the names of various hills, towns, and rivers, but if, like me, they don’t mean anything to you there’s still a sort of abstract beauty to the swirling lines:
The next few displays collected items from the myriad daily lives of the men who had worked in the Homestake Mining Company, which had been a major employer in the region around the turn of the century. While some of the displays were about the drudge and labor of the mining industry, I was most fascinated by the insights into ordinary people’s private hobbies and creative outlets. I love seeing the weird images, ideas, and skills that people carry with them actually manifesting themselves into tangible products. It goes to show that you can work for hours in a mine with someone and have no clue about the artistic flights of fancy going on behind their eyes. One of the most impressive of these secret hobbies belonged to miner named Robert Poe who spent his spare time, after a mining injury left him partially paralyzed, creating whimsical tableau of an all female utopia of basswood sculptures running, playing, and (in a beautifully postmodern twist) even sculpting more women. These surreal, richly detailed scenes did eventually see the light of day during the artist’s life and they ended up being displayed at the Chicago’s World Fair. Not too shabby for a first gallery show!
Another former miner with virtuosic artistic talents, was a man by the name of Anthime Leveque, who left Quebec to work in the mines when he was just 14 (the idea of teenagers having fun is remarkably recent), and while he worked in the those mine his whole professional life, he also began passing the time making progressively more elaborate wooden furniture using a technique called marquetry in which small squares of different wood are artfully arranged and polished to make surface decorations. Leveque’s work was simply stunning with M.C. Escher like optical illusions adding dynamic character and beauty to chairs and tables:
There was also a hilarious photo of then-President William Howard Taft visiting the mines and nobody seeming all that happy about it:
Next up was a kinky little display honoring an unusual folk art tradition by highlighting the sheer variety of ropes and knots used by ranchers, sailors, and idle hands over the years:
One of the museum’s prized items was up next, a mysterious slab of sandstone found called the Thoen Stone. The Stone was found in 1887 by brothers Louis and Ivan Thoen, who were struck by the ominous inscription “Got all the gold we could carry. Our ponies all got by the Indians. I have lost my gun and nothing to eat and Indians hunting me.” Beyond being a spooky relic of a doomed exploring expedition, the stone also gained prominence because of its allusion to finding gold. The stone is thought to date back to 1833 which makes it the earliest known reference to gold in the Black Hills, a good 40 years before the more famous 1876 Gold Rush.
The next display was a fun and silly Ripley or Not’s style exhibit of oddities from around the Black Hills including a two headed calf, and a life size portrait of Robert Wadlow, the world’s tallest recorded man ever at 8’11’’, from his visit to SD.
Next up we came to more historic maps albeit with a slightly more artistic than realistic approach especially in the form of a hilariously inaccurate map of the “square and stationary" Earth:
Next up was a strange little mechanical box which I initially took to be some kind of vintage generator or perhaps surveying equipment but was in reality an early version of a clock with electrical tones instead of more analog bells. It was kind of funny to see such a bulky ancestor for the kind of alarms that now play so simply from the phones in our pockets.
Next we made our way back downstairs, and took in a tremendous gallery of Old West photographs, some of which had that tinge of unintentional psychedelia produced by early attempts at hand colorizing photos. The sheer quality of some of the photos really blew me away, because you sometimes forget that Old West characters like Wild Bill Hickock, Wyatt Earp, or Poker Alice were real people, let alone that they were actually quite well documented in their lifetimes. It’s remarkable thought that for all that documentation, we’ll never really know for sure what it was like, because there was so much intentional myth-making in real time with the West that fact and fiction are so permanently blurred.
As cool as the real deal photos were, I particularly liked seeing more creative representations. Highlights included: A French Graphic novel about Calamity Jane; a spectacular illustration of Wild Bill Hickock; and an insane vintage poster for a movie about the unfortunately named Deadwood Dick who apparently in wore a skull mask and cape and drove around wreaking havoc. I’m sure the movie really strove for historical accuracy. It is weird to think that so much early American pop-culture really glamorized such a difficult, violent place as the frontier, but I guess it made the people telling the tales feel like heroes as opposed to survivors and/or criminals, and it let people in coastal cities feel vicariously excited. Still it’s kind of improbable that such a puritanical society decided that the land of gunslingers and prostitutes was the quintessence of American Identity. That and I think we really needed to justify the brutal displacement of indigenous people’s to ourselves so pitching these folks in the most heroic light possible was the easiest way to make the average American at the time accept and enjoy the story rather than question it too much.
Next we came across across a whopping 7.346 ounce gold nugget, a man named Potato Creek Johnny (a good Christian name) found in 1929 that is celebrated for reportedly being the single largest piece of gold ever found in the Black Hills and also for having an almost uncanny resemblance to a human leg:
The next big display was a smorgasbord of personal items donated from various Deadwood-ites throughout history ranging from the glorious to the mundane to the slightly ridiculous. Through these clothes, instruments, beer cans, jewelry, plaster cast hands, hair (yup bottom right is all hair), books, and ephemera, you get a real snapshot into the various lives that passed through the town in all their ordinary splendor.
My favorite items because they surprised me the most were: an East Asian sword in an exquisitely carved ivory sheath; a fascinating contraption used by hat-makers (milliners?) to take precise head measures, because cowboy hats didn’t actually grow on trees; and a slightly terrifying dinosaur head that I know was probably discovered after the town had already been settled but I really enjoy the image of some explorer making the trek to the Westward frontier carrying this big freaky skull with them the whole time so that’s what I choose to believe happened.
Next was a surprisingly expansive collection of decorative canes that were as artistically impressive as they were pretty goofy:
In the corner was a beautiful piano that used to be accompany silent movies in the town’s historic Deadwood Theater which sadly burned down in 1952. That’s one unfortunate side effect of living in a town of almost entirely historic building, in that structural integrity and fire codes weren’t exactly how the West was won.
The big centerpiece of the museum though was a fully preserved steam locomotive car from the Homestead Mining Co. plopped at the back of the museum in all its steam punk glory. There was no mention of whether or not it could be modified into a time machine a la Back to the Future 3 and that’s probably the only major point against the museum I can really think of.
Along one wall there was this incredible photograph of a giant balloon being inflated in the center of town. I have no idea what possible context goes with this picture, but the absurdity of it as an image really makes me smile.
Next up was a deeply uncomfortable exhibit to look at with my mother about the rich history of brothels, gambling, and boozin’ in Deadwood. Discomfort aside, it was an intriguing look into the seedier side of the town’s history and an important dose of reality to go with the more legendary deeds of outlaws and lawmen. Truly, a case could be made that brothels and sex work were really the back bones of many of these Western towns, particularly in the boom towns that popped up around mines, railroads, and gold deposits where most of the residents were young, unmarried men. They were often run by shrewd, enterprising women, and they offered women a chance for financial independence in a time where that was pretty uncommon. They flip-side to their more positive aspects though was evidenced by some of the other items on display pertaining to the booze, opium, and gambling that was often used to keep both the young men and young women in the towns placated and unlikely to rise above their current stations. That being said, life sounds like it was truly horrible back then so vices of some kind here and there really did seem practically necessary, but it was a delicate balancing act between liberated thinking and abuse. Then again I suppose that same point could also be made about human beings and vices at any point in history.
For a big tonal 180, the next exhibit was replica one room school house with a standee teacher giving lessons on biology, geography, and horseshoes:
Next up was display case of an incredibly intact, and well preserved plesiosaur skeleton. This ancient beast was a marine reptile which implies that at one point in time the towering Black Hills we see today were totally submerged underwater.
Last but not least was a beautiful collection of petrified wood from the region. Existing in that strange place between the natural and mineral, petrified wood always blows me away and these were some of the largest samples, on loan from the Petrified Forest of the Black Hills, I’d ever seen. It was quite a cool, weird, high note to go out on.
Up next my mom and I had planned on doing a tour of one of the historic houses in Deadwood, but we underestimated that it would be a hotspot for tourists that day and the only available tour remaining wasn’t for another couple hours. Rather than be deterred, we decided to spend the intervening hours checking out what ended up being possibly the coolest art gallery I’ve seen in the entire country: The Termesphere Gallery. You might recall that we’d seen a number of Dick Termes’ patented painted spheres since coming to South Dakota, and they were always whimsical delights but we we still weren’t fully prepared for what awaited us at the gallery. The gallery is located on a 3 acre plot of land in Spearfish, SD that Dick bought off his father and brother. He was an educator and artist with an omnivorous love of all things arts and science including the math, biology, psychology, and physics that would worm their way into his signature creations. He was teaching at Black Hills State University when by chance he was tasked with picking up visiting lecturer Buckminster Fuller from the airport. Buckminster Fuller, most famous for his invention of the geodesic dome, was a kindred spirit seeing the limitless connections between the supposedly disparate worlds of hard scientific theory and artistic design, and the two like minds would spend the next couple days hanging out and chatting. This brief encounter lit a fire under young Termes, and he set up building a geodesic dome on his 3 acres that he would make a home out of. Hooked on the process, he built another dome to be his studio, then one to be a guest house, then the dome that houses the permanent gallery, and most recently a greenhouse bringing the total number of geometric domiciles on the property to 5. Being truly immersed within massive geometric sculptures, the idea for Termespheres came to him as four dimensional art objects that would be able to spin and rotate in time giving viewers 6 different points of perspective (as opposed to 2 points of perspective in most 2 dimensional art) opening up a world of new artistic opportunities. It’s a testament to Dick’s perfect marriage of his art and mathematic principles that one of his spheres was actually featured on the front cover of many printings of A Brief History of Time by one Stephen Hawking. No big deal. To visit the gallery, the whole space was so unique that even if it wasn’t positively stuffed with incredible works of art it would have still been worth a visit. I got a little self conscious taking a photo of where the artist actually lived, but luckily someone on the internet wasn’t as squeamish so here’s a cool snapshot of what it’s like to stumble across this wacky hub of creativity tucked into the forests of the Black Hills.
Walking inside, it’s like entering Willy Wonka’s factory, it’s so outside the norm of everyday life. Spheres hang and spin from every possible point on the ceiling, and each one contains its own little world and its own internal logic. Colors pop vibrantly, and your sense of perspective seems to bend and morph with each rotation. It’s a totally dazzling, immersive experience that you hardly even notice that it’s really only one room that isn’t all that big but just happens to be super densely packed with astounding creations.
My mom and I were in total awe of all the different ways the artist was able to utilize the same basic form to create such varied dynamic pieces. While there wasn’t a weak link in the place, if I had to pick favorites, my highlights were: a really trippy mostly sphere with swirling shapes and vines that seem to converge on the center and then re-emerge out the other end; a Stonehenge-esque scene with a stunningly abstracted sunset on the horizon; a dreamy imagining of early Puebloan cliff dwellings done in the sandy reds of the Southwest; a playful optical illusion of a seemingly infinite cubes checkerboard-ed with transparent squares so that you see the front of the cubes and the back of the opposite cubes simultaneously to really give you a topsy turvy feeling charmingly undercut by little vines and birds; a hilariously geometric dance scene; a sphere that appears to be being cracked open from the inside by an inquisitive toddler; a wonderful tribute to M.C. Escher, another clear influence, with paintings of optical illusions within paintings of optical illusions; and a fantastical piece of an ancient temple falling into beautiful decay.
Not content to just mess around with spheres, there were even a few works that explored perspective with varyingly complex geometric structures. The ability to conceive of space life like that and being able to know exactly how to translate images smoothly across such vastly different shapes is totally mind-blowing to me. I can’t even get a two dimensional drawing to come out how I want it to, so being able to plan how to make things like these and then actually pulling it off is just nuts.
Hanging on the walls were early two-dimensional works from the Dick’s career, that were equally impressive and really highlight that even when he was working in a more traditional medium he was still trying to push the limits of perspective and illusions as fas as he possibly could:
Lastly while I’m thrilled to share all my pictures from a place I loved so much, still-photos simply can’t do justice to art works that are meant to be experienced in motion and space. So here’s a video from Dick’s YouTube Channel showing the space and the sphere’s in action, and if you want a fun way to easily mesmerize yourself and accidentally lose a couple hours, his whole oeuvre is pretty lovingly documented, catalogued, and filmed on his website: https://termespheres.com/
We made our way back to Deadwood in time for our tour of the historic Adams House. This 19th century home of wealthy entrepreneur and former Deadwood mayor, William Emery Adams, was built in the Queen Anne style and represents the height of technology and fashion of its period with gorgeous oak interiors, lush handpainted wallpaper, stained glass windows, and even crazy new fads like indoor plumbing and electricity. It impresses visitors right away by striking a unique profile right away with its distinctive turret like structure that makes it look like a mix between a regal home and a cozy cathedral.
The tour was a lot of fun, and the guide’s ability to be informing while also saying the phrase “Adams family” with a straight face so many times was truly commendable. My parents really like historic houses, partly because there’s just a lot of them in New England to explore and mostly because they mix small scale stories with bigger picture history, arts, and culture so it was fun to get to share this doozy of a home with my mom. As soon as we walked in, it was clear that no expense was spared on even the smallest details with the curtains, lampshades, and mantlepieces all exuding totally unnecessary (but pretty impressive) lavishness. The flaunting of wealth is kinda gross, but the flipside is that clearly a lot of talented craftsmen and artisans made a pretty penny off the Adamses.
Perhaps the height of the ridiculousness was seeing Wedgwood pottery casually being used to house potted plants. I’d only seen Wedgwood stuff in art museum collections, but they’re still around now and for reference one of their mass-produced tea cups currently runs you around $60-80 so one of these vintage handmade vases must be in the several thousand dollar price points today. It is super classy looking though, I gotta admit.
I think the most beautiful thing from the main landing was this insanely intricate fireplace with incredible shimmering tiles encircling the main grate:
Visually the kitchen was a real show stopper with all kinds of fancy dinner ware and stained glass windows and lighting fixtures bathing the room in a warm light. I would be absolutely terrified to actually eat or drink off any of this stuff though because it feels tantamount to wiping your nose with a painting. I don’t think I’d be very good at being rich.
Through the kitchen was a cozy reception area for tea and entertainment before and after meals, which was definitely more laid back while still also being pretty decadent.
Naturally as a big fan of trickery and hidden compartments, I was delighted when they revealed that there was a secret safe hidden behind a panel in the wall. It gave things a fun Scooby Doo twist of how cartoons imagine rich people being not that far from the truth.
The next room was Adams’ wife, Mary’s, study with a choral, seaside theme reflected in all the interior designs in terms of shell motifs and gentle pinks throughout. It was pretty impressive design-wise, and I remember learning that shell collection was an interestingly big fad around the turn of the century, which seems silly to me growing up on a coast, but I guess in land locked states these things must have been much more novel. Mary was also a really cool figure in her own right, because while her husband was pretty wealthy, when he passed away she happened to invest the $100,000 he left her two tiny little upstarts that would become Disney and IBM. She died with $12 million.
My favorite piece from this room was this opulent wooden screen with a beautiful woven Nature scene in the center. Between the frame and the body, it’s just so much prettier than something ever needs to be to just stick in front of the fireplace when you’re not using it.
In contrast to the the delicate seaside of Mary’s room, William’s study was more classical and masculine, with forest green wall paper invoking British hunting tapestries, massive paintings, and the height of modernity, a radio! I like that right below the radio was a spittoon, which kinda shows that a little bit of rough and tumble Old West-ness even wormed its way into the upper classes even if I’m sure William was probably spitting much fancier tobacco than the local gunslingers in town.
Upstairs we got to check out all the snazzy bedrooms. Personally putting a couch right at the foot of your bed seems kinda like putting a hat on a hat, because once you’re lounging you’re lounging, but on their own both pieces of furniture were perfectly lovely.
Naturally every tiny thing around the bed was incredibly ornate with gorgeous lighting fixtures, totally insane toiletries, and even mother of pearl binoculars because what lady’s dresser would be complete without them?
Something that apparently set the Adamses apart from their wealthy contemporaries was that they actually seemed to care about their help, and they even gave their maid her own bedroom which was apparently super uncommon for the time. It was a very pretty room, but I guess the trade-off for nice room and board is that you never quite get to actually leave work. Benevolence can only go so far when it’s conditional on employment:
Walking through the hallways little details we’d normally miss like doorframes even managed to be super eye-catching:
Down the service staircase, we went into the heart of the house: the kitchen. The dish-wear was unsurprisingly luxurious, but the antique technology like the at the time top of the line gas stove definitely stole the show.
My favorite kitchen appliances were a very intense looking old timey waffle iron and an early Bissell vacuum clean with the truly baffling inscription that it was “‘cyco bearing”. Your guess is as good as mine.
Hands down the most shocking thing in the whole kitchen, maybe the whole house, was a jar of Malted Grape-Nut cookies that has remained untouched for nearly a century. You know what they say some see the jar of hundred year old cookies as half empty, some see it as half full, but anyone who tries to eat them will surely end up in the emergency room.
If you were wondering what kind of people lived in a house like this, there were some great vintage photos of this decidedly less all together ooky Adams family all through the house. The house was actually initially built as a tribute to William’s deceased first wife Alice which you would think would be a lot of pressure on his second wife Mary, but she had her Disney millions as a pretty solid consolation prize.
Naturally my favorite part of the house when all was said and done was the getting to see how obscenely swanky all the bathrooms were. I just always love the lengths people will go to dress up the fact that they piss and shit like everyone else. These lavatories were truly works of art though with gorgeous granite countertops and gold lined bathtubs being the most over the top finds. To give them a small modicum of defense, indoor plumbing was really novel at this point in time so I guess if I’d spent 30-40 years having to use an outhouse or a chamberpot, I can understand the first splurge you’d wanna make upon coming into wealth would be on never doing that again.
Finishing up our tour, we made sure to take a minute to just walk around the place and really admire what a pretty building it is. Today ended up being a particularly nice day for whimsical architecture.
After the tour, we were just a short drive away from Mount Moriah Cemetery where many Wild West legends including Wild Bill Hickock and Calamity Jane are buried, but they were charging admission but my mom and I felt like death tourism was just the teensiest bit icky so we opted to just go for a walk around the outside and enjoy the beautiful views over the Black Hills for free.
After a big day of exploring, I was in desperate need of a coffee before our drive back to Rapid City so we stopped at a super cool coffee shop in a refurbished gas station called the Pump House which on top of making a good cup of call also shared a space with a glass blowing studio called Mind Blown Hot Glass Studio so we got to take in all kinds of neat glass sculptures while refueling. I didn’t think to take a picture but here’s a weirdly small one from the internet which I think captures the place’s quaint retro style.
When my mom and I made it back to Rapid, we decided to indulge ourselves a bit and take in a wine tasting at the lovely local Firehouse Wine Cellars. We went all out and got a pretty varied sampler featuring their Prairie Flower rosé, an oak-aged Chardonnay, a Riesling, a Pinot noir, a merlot, and their Book Club red blend. We were both pretty impressed by their output and it made sense when we learned that they’d won a pretty good number of awards for a little winery out of South Dakota. I like the chardonnay most because the oak aging gave it a slightly whiskey-like taste, but if memory serves correct my mom had a slight preference for the reds, and I think our server got a pretty good kick out of watching a boy get tipsy with his mother
After our classy boozing, we honored our ancestors by going to the one Irish pub in town, Murphy’s Pub and Grill, for dinner. You might remember that Murphy’s also secretly houses the very cool speakeasy that I got to do the open mic at earlier in the week, but my mom and I decided to stay on the up and up and just go to the restaurant portion. I ordered the decidedly not-very-Irish but super delicious Dakota pulled pork sandwich which came with a fascinating watermelon-jalapeno bbq sauce and a heaping helping of mashed potatoes. The BBQ sauce was on the spicy side for my frail constitution, but the watermelon sweetness did cut through some of the spice in a way that was much more pleasant than I would have expected so it was a pretty tremendous sandwich and a nice step out of my comfort zone. My mom played it safe with a grilled chicken sandwich and a fruit salad, but I think it was solid if less exciting meal for her as well. The craziest part of the dinner though was that two of my friends from high school just happened to walk in to the same restaurant which was only about a half continent away from our hometown. My friend Alexis, I did know was in SD, because she’s been doing Teach for America on one of the Lakota reservations in the middle of the state, so we had been planning to meet up after my mom flew home, but I had no idea that our friend Sami had just coincidentally also decided to fly out to visit her the same week that I was there so the fact that we all ended up in the same spot was just a wonderful happy accident. We got to all make plans to hang out tomorrow, but I didn’t want to abandon my mom for too long since this was our last night together (at least for a while) so after some brief but really nice chatting I resumed my dinner. Plus I don’t remember Catholicism too well, but I’m pretty sure it’s a cardinal sin to let mashed potatoes get cold.
After our pretty jam packed day, we just relaxed and hung out in the hotel room for the rest of the night. We’d initially had a tough time getting into our driving audio book, George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo, because there’s well over a dozen different narrators and the main action is alternated with chapters that are like collages of actual historical documents from Lincoln’s time (with a few very clever forgeries by the author seamlessly blended in), but once we surrendered to the book’s unique structure and rhythms we got really hooked on it, so we spent a good chunk of the night just listening in wrapt attention. It doesn’t hurt that the audio book also has an unreal cast of readers each voicing a different one of the ghost’s in Saunders’ imagined Bardo (based on Tibetan concept similar to purgatory) that take a recently deceased Willie Lincoln under their wing including Nick Offerman, David Sedaris, Megan Mullally, Ben Stiller, Susan Sarandon, Bill Hader, and many more. While the structure is non-traditional, the humor and heart that quickly emerge really made it a powerful piece of fiction that does a good job finding the humanity that often gets left out of history.
Favorite Random Sightings: Chris Supply (in case you run out of Chris’s presumably); an ad for “The Best lumberyard You Ever Sawed” (a glorious stretch of a terrible pun); H20 to Go! (the exclamation mark killed me)
Regional Observations: There had been a pretty serious fire in the Black Hills a couple months before our visit, so many of the trees were still charred and black which gave the largely beautiful surroundings a touch of eeriness.
Albums Listened To: Just our audio book
Joke of the Day:
A wife, being a romantic at heart, decided one day that she’d send her husband a text while she was out having coffee with a friend. She texted:
If you are sleeping, send me your dreams.
If you are laughing, send me your smile.
If you are eating, send me a bite.
If you are drinking, send me a sip.
If you are crying, send me your tears.
I love you.
The husband texted back:
I’m on the toilet.
Please advise.
Song(ish) of the Day:
This is a lot, but I think it’s the closest a live reading can capture the strange, complex beauty of this wonderful book and the expansive cast of the audio book