Bridges 2024 Exhibition of Mathematical Art, Craft, and Design

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 piece is part of Sarah’s and Mark’s larger joint poem-collage project involving the ancient history of mathematics.

Artworks

Image for entry 'Conic sections'

Conic sections

26.1 x 33.3 cm

Digital print, collage materials, paper, ink

2023

Additional info

Apollonius of Perga (262-190 BCE) was a Greek mathematician known as The Great Geometer. His treatise Conics brought the knowledge of conic sections, ellipses, parabolas, and hyperbolas, to the state prior to the invention of the Cartesian coordinates. Central to both poem and collage, is the image of the cone-shaped toddler toy called Stacking Rings. This toy highlights Apollonius’ genius, which must have become evident to those observing him early in life, as well as one of his mathematical innovations: the method of generating all conic sections using a single cone. Apollonius lived in Alexandria, Egypt, and Pergamum, Myasia, represented in the collage by the maps, postcard, and ancient amphitheater images. More information at the link.