Madelon Powers Gallery to Present Math+Art

East Stroudsburg University’s Madelon Powers Gallery will present Math+Art from September 21 – October 21. Gallery hours are 11 a.m. – 4 p.m., Monday – Friday. The exhibit will feature work by ESU faculty members Jonathan Keiter, Ph.D., associate professor of mathematics; Christopher Dubbs, Ph.D., assistant professor of mathematics; Kristin Noblet, Ph.D., associate professor of mathematics; and Xuemao Zhang, Ph.D., associate professor of mathematics.

A reception for the artists will take place Wednesday, September 21 from 4 – 6 p.m. in the gallery located in the university’s Fine and Performing Arts Center, Normal and Marguerite streets. Included in the reception is a brief talk by the teacher-artist-researchers.

From ancient Egyptian sculptures and architecture, Greek philosophy and geometry, Renaissance art, and Islamic tiling through our Modern Age with high-speed computers, mathematics has influenced the creation of beautiful and creative works of art. Throughout these eras, mathematicians have created art in the exploration of their research. Some have used art to convey mathematical concepts and present data in a useful way, while others have used mathematical formulations to generate art. In these, and other, cases mathematicians use art by drawing figures, visualizing data, creating 3D sculptures, and finding forms for the functions.

In this blend of original and collected works, Dr. Dubbs, Dr. Keiter, Dr. Noblet and Dr. Zhang present ways that they have used art in their teaching and research.

Dubbs has used arts-based research methods to generate art from data. His original piece “What have we wondered?” is a visually stunning representation of citation relationships. By drawing over 15,000 citation connections between over 5,000 references in the field of mathematics education research, this impressive 19.5’ foot image invites the viewer to ask “What have we [as researchers] wondered?”, that is, what has constituted the focus of the field of mathematics education research? While this image approaches art in the aesthetic sense, it also remains a utile data representation: these 15,000 connections and 5,000 references are available as part of a suite of fully-interactive data representations on the companion website: MathEdAtlas.org.

Keiter has found ways to incorporate art in helping students understand the beauty of mathematics. He uses art to express functions of two variables (contours and wood sculptures), demonstrates geometric properties of Euclidean and Non-Euclidean geometries (projective geometry and anamorphic art), and explores modular arithmetic (string art). Noblet has created projects for her students that engage both their math and art skills: how do we fit a curve into a natural form that we encounter in the world? Meanwhile, Zhang showcases his statistical skills in creating rich data visualizations that inform the viewer of real-world large data sets in an approachable way.

The Madelon Powers Gallery, located at the Fine & Performing Arts Center, features an ongoing series of exhibitions by professional artists as well as by students in a 1,000-square-foot exhibition space with two-story high ceilings. All exhibits and events in the gallery are open to the public at no cost. For gallery information, call (570) 422-3694 or email kdevine5@esu.edu

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