In Dylan Thomas: Coast Salish artist, some of Dylan Thomas’s artworks are detailed and mathematical concepts behind the pieces are explained. But first, we learned that Dylan Thomas learned art from an extended community (from Salish, Haida, and Nuu-chah-nulth artists): Seletze, Art Thompson, Robert Davidson, Susan Point, and M. C. Escher. In the selected pieces presented by the artist, some recurrent themes are living beings, bridging cultures, and modernity. One of my favourite artworks created by the artist is entitled The Union of Night and Day that I found here: https://emagazine.aggv.ca/art-as-a-spiritual-practice-qa-with-dylan-thomas/. Some of the mathematical concepts used in Dylan Thomas’s work are tessellations, reflection, rotation, translation, symmetry, etc.
Stop 1: “In this design, I altered a regular tiling of the plane by squares by replacing their straight edges with wavy edges. The concept of ‘flow’ is important in Salish art, and that is what led to the wavy tiles, whose edges are very much like sine curves”
In this quote, Dylan Thomas shows us an example of how two-eyed seeing can be applied, and how we could bring it into play in a classroom. In this quote, Dylan Thomas is saying that he adapted the tessellation technique (from Escher) to include an important element of the Salish culture. To create this piece of work, Dylan Thomas took elements from two different cultures, which created a beautiful artwork. This quote and the artwork can be seen as a metaphor of the power of two-eyed seeing: two cultures joining their strengths to create new and extraordinary ideas. Nowadays, in the era of reconciliation, it is important to show to our students the power of two-eyed seeing and the relevance of other ways of knowing and doing (Meyer & Aikenhead, 2021). Two-eyed seeing could be applied by looking at geometry in Indigenous artwork, or like my last week’s reading, by trying out a type of geometry different from Euclid geometry (the only geometry taught in the curriculum). For example, I could ask my students to create their artwork inspired by Dylan Thomas’s work with geometric tools and body measurements.
Stop 2: “Art is one of the things that makes us human, and bridging different cultural art forms helps me to feel the unity
of humankind.”
We learned in week 1 that mathematics is often seen has a discipline that requires the mind to be detached from the body (Gerofsky, personal communication, January 8th, 2026). We also learned from Jo Boaler (2008) that mathematics is a human activity, a social phenomenon that is as creative as art, but is often misrepresented in school. And then, we also learn from Hannula (2020) how major is the role of emotions in mathematics. This quote, from Dylan Thomas, showed me how can art become an ally in re-connecting mathematics to the body and the emotions. Creating mathematical artwork or investigating mathematical artwork could help my students see that mathematics is about emotions and creativity. It could help them feel more human while doing mathematics. For example, I would like to ask my students to represent with an artwork the data they found about the caribou population from my final project in our last course. Not only would my students enjoy doing art in a math class, but I feel like the community would be more interested into looking at the result if they are represented as artwork.
How confident do you feel about using art to teach mathematics concepts? What challenges do you anticipate?
References
Boaler J. (2008). The Elephant in the classroom: Helping children cearn & love maths. Souvenir Press.
Hannula, M. S. (2020). Affect in mathematics education. In S. Lerman (Ed.), Encyclopedia of mathematics education (pp. 32-36). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15789-0_174
Meyer, S. & Aikenhead, G. (2021). Indigenous culture-based school mathematics in action part II: The study’s results: what support do teachers need? The Mathematics Enthusiast. 18(1). DOI: https://doi.org/10.54870/1551-3440.1517
I loved when you said :"it is important to show to our students the power of two-eyed seeing and the relevance of other ways of knowing and doing". This is such an important concept especially in today's world. We need to push students to see everything, not just math, from different perspectives.
ReplyDeleteI think out of all the art forms, I am most comfortable bring Visual Arts into my math class. I plan to do this in my final project for this course. Although I consider myself far from an artist, it is the art form that sparks my interest the most, and I love how there is something physical and visual to take away from it.
Noemi, I love the ways you see the embodied arts, in the natural world, as ways to feel more fully human when doing math! This is a profound insight, and an important one if we are to help new generations engage with their mathematical capabilities and inheritances.
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