‘Seeing the Unseen: Math and Art’ exhibit will open Monday
“Seeing the Unseen: Math and Art” will open Monday at the Wignall Museum of Contemporary Art on Chaffey College’s Rancho Cucamonga campus.
The exhibition, featuring the work of 15 artists, runs through March 9 and includes steel 3D printed sculptures of Bathsheba Grossman and a visual exploration of non-Euclidean geometry from “3-Dimensional.Space” a group of physics and mathematics professors.
“All of the artists either have formal training in math or they have an active interest in math as artists,” Roman Stollenwerk, assistant curator for the museum, said in a news release. “The common link is that they are all actively engaging with math in their work.”
Altadena physicist Robert J. Lang, considered a leading master of the art of origami, will present several artworks, including “One in a Billion,” painted cast bronze in the shape of an origami unicorn, according to the news release. Lang collaborated with sculptor Kevin Box, a master at casting paper origami in metal.
“Much of his work is so complex that he actually uses math to determine where to score the fold lines,” Stollenwerk said in the news release.
The exhibition is a continuation of Chaffey College’s “Seeing the Unseen” series, which combines science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) with art. Numerous workshops will be included alongside the exhibition, covering subjects such as how crocheting relates to math and how NASA and JPL use origami to explore the universe.
Chaffey College math professors Morgan Rea and Hannah Seidler-Wright first approached the Wignall Museum with the idea to combine math and art before the COVID-19 pandemic. STEM professors plan to incorporate the exhibition into their lessons to show students how their concepts apply to other disciplines.
“Having students make those unseen connections visible and explicit will help them gain confidence in any discipline and will hopefully help them appreciate and get excited about math in ways they had not before,” Seidler-Wright said in the news release.
Rea said that she and SeidlerWright wanted to break down the idea that mathematicians and scientists can’t be artists.
“Creativity is absolutely necessary for mathematics and the sciences, and there are so many mathematical properties at play in the arts, even if they aren’t obvious,” Rea said..
The Wignall Museum, on Chaffey’s Rancho Cucamonga campus at 5885 Haven Ave., is open 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday through Thursday and noon-4 p.m. Saturdays. Admission is free.