Andrew James Smith

This year the Bridges Math Art conference was held at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. To coordinate with the conference, the University Art Gallery (UWAG) presented the exhibit “Passage + Obstacle”, featuring work that addresses the mission of the Bridges organization, as well as metaphorical bridges that allow transport over obstacles.

“Protogon Shift” (triptych), Andrew James Smith, 2014
Picture courtesy of the gallery and the artist

In Andrew James Smith’s triptych painting “Protogon Shift”, each of the three canvases begins with a triangle at its center. A series of 98 polygons are connected to form a spiral composed of all straight lines. Leading us from the most basic polygon (triangle ) to the most complex.

“Protogon Shift” (triptych), Andrew James Smith, 2014 (side view)
Picture courtesy of the gallery and the artist

The images changes appearance depending on the viewer’s vantage point in the gallery.

“Composition in Red, Green, And Blue”, Laura De Decker, 2013
Digital animation – gallery still shot
Picture courtesy of the gallery and the artist

Laura De Deckers video “Composition in Red, Green, And Blue” was created using custom computer code written by the artist to create prints. Using just the three colors De Decker transforms computer language to abstract visual images. Here is just a short sample of the video.

The Bridges conference also sponsored its own art exhibition which I will write about in future blog posts.

Susan Happersett

This year the huge Joint Mathematics Meeting was held in Atlanta Georgia with over 6,000 attendees. A section of the exhibition hall was turned into a gallery space to present art work with mathematical connections. There were also dozens of talks presented by both mathematicians and artists on the topic of Mathematical Art.

During one of these talks, Sarah Stengle presented work from her collaboration with Genevieve Gaiser Tremblay. The large series of works on paper, titled “Criterion of Yielding”, uses stereoscopic images from the 1850’s as the background for drawings of diagrams from the book “Mathematics of Plasticity” written by Rodney Hill in 1950.

The work “Criterion of Yielding, Winter Scene” features a mathematical schematic based on the deformation of metals that creates a visual bridge between the solitary figure on each side of the stereoscopic card. To enhance the feeling of antiquity, the artist uses ground peridot gemstone to make the pigment. This process gives the color a sense of stains instead of paint alluding to the paper as artifact.

The topic of plasticity revolves around the measurement of stress, strain, bending, and yielding. All these ideas are poetically associated to the human condition, both as individuals and with regards to our interactions. The layering of mathematical material over existing images presents an unexpected dichotomy. The additional process of pigmented staining and mark making instills each work with a sense of time.

Andrew James Smith developed a unique process of drawing regular polygons to create a spiral called a Protogon. The process to form a Protogon begins with a triangle and progresses with each new polygon sharing a side with the previous polygon and having one more side.

“Proto Pinwheel” is a digital study for a large acrylic painting and is a pigment transfer on wood. For this work Smith has started with a yellow opaque Protogon shape and then rotated 120 degrees and layered subsequent Protogon shapes in varying transparent colors. The result is a spiral pulsing with energy.