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Art experiments in a mathematics classroom

I grew up in Rourkela, a small steel township in eastern India. There were no museums or art galleries and books were treasured and shared. As I look back, two well-thumbed books in my parents’ house have had a lasting influence on me. One, was a book of problems called Mathematics can be Fun by Perelman (1973) and the other was Picasso 75th Anniversary Exhibition catalogue (Alfred H. Barr, Jr., 1957). The Picasso catalogue opened up an entirely new way of seeing and imagining. The book of problems is probably the reason I studied mathematics at university rather than art. After getting my Bachelor’s degree inmathematics, I had wanted to go back to university to study art, but that never happened and I did some short courses in art instead. Now I live and work in Hong Kong and my canvases are generally of modest dimensions – whatever will fit into a Hong Kong elevator. Although working in a city implies cramped studio space, there are great opportunities to visit exhibitions of contemporary artists from around the world. Despite the far-reaching early influence of the Picasso exhibition catalogue, the experience of seeing an actual artwork is quite special. I teachmathematics at King George V School (KGV) inHong Kong. It is a non-selective international school, part of the English Schools Foundation. I teach classes from Years 7 through Year 13 (ages 11–17). The interactions with my students frequently give me ideas for my artistic practice. Reading mathematical recreations and visiting galleries are other sources of inspiration. I try to make works that have mathematical content which my students can understand and relate to. I usually use acrylic paints on canvas which I stretch myself. This allows me to get the exact dimensions that I need, and it is also the most economical option. To get a deeper understanding of different hues and how they interact with each other I undertook a series of painting experiments. The framework for these experiments was a mathematical investigation involving the movement of a ball on different sized billiard tables (Figure 1). The structure of my experiments allowed me to study the interactions of colour in terms of number of hues used, effect of size of a hue, effect of the order of application of the paint, etc. In this paper, I describe how I devised a method to do the visual inquiry and the role that my students played in creating a ‘tablecloth’ work.