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September 23, 2006	Shawn Rocco
How is the mind fooled by a few simple strokes of a paintbrush? For the more than 100 volunteers working with French installation artist and photographer Georges Rousse, the answer is being revealed in the creation of four temporary trompe l'oeil - French for "trick of the eye" - installations in soon-to-be renovated or razed interior spaces in downtown Durham, like the Baldwin Building seen here at 107 W. Main Street. For the past 30 years Rousse has been flirting with the laws of perspective to create the illusion of flat shapes floating in a 3D world. But with the number of people included in his current project, the process is like no other he's done before. For all involved, this public art project has taken on the dimension of a social activism endeavor, where people are making new connections and building community as a direct result of creating art. And that's no illusion.