Amy Selikoff
I am not a mathematician. I majored in history and journalism. My highest math class was not calculus, it was math for liberal arts major, or as my transcript says “Concepts of Fundamental Math” (lovingly nicknamed ‘fun-for-mentals’ by the mathematics department). I didn’t even begin my life as an artist until 8-hour graduate school seminars and a set of highlighters gave me time and opportunity. Art was a way I could multi-task and make my lecture notes look like Seurat’s pointillist landscapes. As it turns out, I love math and I love art, and I love creating art that also uses math. I am fascinated by shapes, patterns, design, and colors. For the past few months I’ve been exploring prime numbers and the patterns they can make both on a grid and in more organic free-forms of drawing. I think numbers are beautiful and complex.
In my explorations of the patterns of prime numbers, I tried many different configurations using grid paper. I began to spiral the numbers out from the center of a grid. I filled in numbers from right to left. Finally, I began filling in the grid along the diagonal and it created an attractive and much more interesting pattern than my earlier grids. Every prime number in sequence is represented by its equivalent number of squares on the grid. Additionally, each square is numbered, providing another layer of meaning and texture to the artwork.
Color captivates me; I was trying to come up with a pattern using 6 colors that corresponded to the 6 different ending digits of all prime numbers (1, 2, 3, 5, 7, and 9). For example, the prime number ‘51’ is represented by the same color as all other primes ending in ‘1’ (11, 31, etc). I tried hundreds of color patterns, eventually settling on four bold color palates.
In my explorations of the patterns of prime numbers, I tried many different configurations using grid paper. I began to spiral the numbers out from the center of a grid. I filled in numbers from right to left. Finally, I began filling in the grid along the diagonal and it created an attractive and much more interesting pattern than my earlier grids. Every prime number in sequence is represented by its equivalent number of squares on the grid. Additionally, each square is numbered, providing another layer of meaning and texture to the artwork.
Color captivates me; I was trying to come up with a pattern using 6 colors that corresponded to the 6 different ending digits of all prime numbers (1, 2, 3, 5, 7, and 9). For example, the prime number ‘51’ is represented by the same color as all other primes ending in ‘1’ (11, 31, etc). I tried hundreds of color patterns, eventually settling on four bold color palates.
In my explorations of the patterns of prime numbers, I tried many different configurations using grid paper. I began to spiral the numbers out from the center of a grid. I filled in numbers from right to left. Finally, I began filling in the grid along the diagonal and it created an attractive and much more interesting pattern than my earlier grids. Every prime number in sequence is represented by its equivalent number of squares on the grid. Additionally, each square is numbered, providing another layer of meaning and texture to the artwork.
Color captivates me; I was trying to come up with a pattern using 6 colors that corresponded to the 6 different ending digits of all prime numbers (1, 2, 3, 5, 7, and 9). For example, the prime number ‘51’ is represented by the same color as all other primes ending in ‘1’ (11, 31, etc). I tried hundreds of color patterns, eventually settling on four bold color palates.