2023 Joint Mathematics Meetings
Bronna A. Butler and Jessica K. Sklar
Artists
Bronna Butler
Mathematical Artist
B. A. Baroque Arts, LLC
New Jersey, USA
Statement
Artist Bronna A. Butler and mathematician Jessica K. Sklar began collaborating as QED Arts, LLC in Spring 2020, after serendipitously connecting at the Joint Mathematics Meetings. They create pieces that celebrate mathematics as a humanistic endeavor and honor its elegance, working from the premises that mathematics is for everyone and that whimsy and mathematics are not mutually exclusive.
Artworks
Do the Math
50 x 68 x 3 cm
Print of a pastel drawing on toned paper
2022
Mathematics is a crucial tool for analyzing climate change, and plays significant roles in the fields of environmental science and sustainability. Here we focus on the global mean surface temperature (GMST), which has risen alarmingly in recent years. Minor fluctuations notwithstanding, the change in temperature in degrees Celsius ($\Delta^\circ$C) relative to 1850-1900 has dramatically increased; moreover, generally it is increasing more and more rapidly as the years go by. In our piece, OctoPi has created a simplified version of the graph found in Figure 1.2 of the "Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Special Report: Global Warming of 1.5$^\circ$ Celsius" (p. 57), and drawn derivatives in the sand indicating the graph’s trends.