Math Art

So many adult learners have been taught that math is a set of rigid procedures to be memorized, applied to meaningless problems, and then forgotten, leaving memories of worksheets, panic, and self-doubt. Art and mathematics are both fundamental human activities, yet how many adult learners have had the opportunity to create something beautiful with math or use math to explore artifacts of their own making? 

Annie Perkins, a teacher in the Twin Cities, defines math art as something which inspires curiosity about structure. If you are looking for activities to teach your students math through the making of beautiful art, check out her Math Art Challenges. 

Explore Celtic Knots, Sona drawings, probability designs, Islamic Geometry, Hitomezashi stitching, Hilbert curves, Mondrian puzzles, spirals, and more. Some are advanced, but most are accessible to all. 

A good place to get started is to scroll through the Math Art Challenge page linked above. Annie included a picture of each project in the list, so it's easier to find one to try. You can also browse the #mathartchallenge hashtag on Twitter to see what others have done. 

          

     

      



Paula Beardell Krieg is an artist who makes works with paper, teaches book arts, and thinks a lot about math. Her website, Playful Bookbinding and Paper Works is filled with activities for students to explore paper folding, lines, fractions, patterns, symmetry, rigid transformations and familiar shapes (like triangles, hexagons and pentagons) and unfamiliar shapes (like kaliedocycles and hexaflexagons).


Since 2015, math teachers and enthusiasts across the world have connected over Twitter for 10 weeks a year to respond to weekly math photo challenges, including things like #Arrays, #Equivalence, #Shape, #Number, #Reflections #Rotations, #Scale, #Estimation, #Beauty, #Solids, etc.

Join this year's math photo challenge! Get your students involved!

    Each year the photos get archived. Here are the collections from previous years:


    Clarissa Grandi hosts Artful Maths where she shares Math Art lessons with full instructions to explore geometry and draw curves of pursuit, impossible objects, mandalas, Celtic knotwork, and more! 

           


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