Discover Math in Art

I’ve written before about supplementing your children’s experience of math by playing games and reading good books.

But as I’m working on my new book, I wanted to add another valuable supplement that we often overlook. So here’s a preview excerpt from Charlotte Mason’s Living Math…

Discover Math in Art

In addition to books, supplement your child’s experience of math with art. When students learn to visualize shapes, designs, and patterns, it makes them better at math. Even topics like algebra can be surprisingly visual.

Art lets children experiment with lines, curves, shapes and symmetries, exploring a wide range of mathematical structures and relationships.

While any piece of artwork has mathematical elements, geometric art and sculpture are easy places for beginners to start. Consider, for example, M. C. Escher’s tessellations, Islamic and Arabic decorative designs, Celtic knot patterns, or the playfulness of Op Art.

You can use the Notice-Wonder-Create cycle of learning: Choose an image to study, and begin by paying attention to everything you can see. What sort of math was the artist playing with?

Consider elements such as…

• Number: unit, counting, order, sequence, series, precision, approximation, and so on.

• Shape: line, angle, parallel, perpendicular, polygon, face, side, vertex, curve, arc, circle, ellipse, chord, radius, diameter, shape, space, boundary, position, depth, perspective, size, and so on.

• Pattern: symmetry, reflection, rotation, repetition, reverse, tessellation, illusion, rhythm, growth, spiral, structure, decoration, color (and relations on a color wheel), and so on.

Wonder about the things you notice, the choices the artist made, or what they might have been thinking. Wonder about relationships to mathematical concepts or to other artistic works. If you were creating this piece, what would you have changed or done differently?

Then create a math art image of your own, riffing off one or more of your noticings and wonderings.

Sources for Math Art

• John Golden’s “(Mathhombre) Miscellanea” Tumblr: mathhombre.tumblr.com, and “Math × Art” page: mathhombre.blogspot.com/p/mathart.html.

• “Mathematical Art Lessons” by Clarissa Grandi: artfulmaths.com/mathematical-art-lessons.html.

• “#MathArtChallenge” by Annie Perkins: arbitrarilyclosecom.wordpress.com/home.

• The Bridges Conference “Mathematical Art Galleries”: artgallery.bridgesmathart.org.

• “Mathematics and art” article: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematics_and_art, and “List of mathematical artists”: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mathematical_artists.

• Islamic Art and Geometric Design: Activities for Learning by The Metropolitan Museum of Art: archive.org/details/IslamicArtandGeometricDesignActivitiesforLearning.

• Celtic Art, The Methods Of Construction by George Bain: archive.org/details/CelticArtTheMethodsOfConstruction.

• “What can you do with a page full of dots?” from my Let’s Play Math blog: denisegaskins.com/2017/03/23/dot-grid-doodling.

And Three Examples to Enjoy

“Theseus Mosaic” by artist unknown, marble and limestone pebbles, circa 350.

“The importance of knowing perspective” by William Hogarth, engraving on paper, circa 1750.

“Composition I (still life)” by Theo van Doesburg, oil on canvas, 1916.

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