2023 Bridges Conference Art Exhibition

Sarah Glaz, Mark Sanders

Artists

Sarah Glaz

Emeritus Professor of Mathematics

Department of Mathematics, The University of Connecticut

Storrs, Connecticut, USA

sarah.glaz@uconn.edu

https://www2.math.uconn.edu/~glaz/

Statement

The poet, Sarah Glaz, resides in the US. She is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at the University of Connecticut specializing in the area of commutative algebra. Her poetry is often inspired by mathematics and its history. Mark Sanders, from Northamptonshire, UK, is a collage and ceramic artist whose work engages with surrealism. His collage construction is driven by research and combines materials already in his stockpile with new components as required by the subject. This is the fifth poem-collage pair on which Sarah Glaz and Mark Sanders have collaborated. The piece is part of their larger joint poem-collage project involving the ancient history of mathematics.

Artworks

Image for entry 'Eratosthenes' Lament'

Eratosthenes' Lament

29.7 x 42.0 cm

Digital print, collage material, ink

2023

Additional info

Eratosthenes (276–194 BCE), a Greek polymath who produced work in geography, history, astronomy, mathematics, poetry, and literary criticism, served as the chief librarian of The Great Library of Alexandria. Although admired by many of his contemporaries, his enemies called him Beta, the second letter of the Greek alphabet, implying that he was not first rate in any area. The poem attempts to flesh out the man behind Eratosthenes’ impressive mathematical achievements; while the collage represents and extends visually the poem’s content. The top right images of Blake’s compass yielding figure and Pompey’s pillar, evoke the tools of ancient Greek geometry, the straight-edge and compass. See the link under the image for more information.