Mathematic Bliss

Every night after work, I bike home past the Math Department's LeRoy Cowles Building, which is connected to the T. Benny Rushing Mathematics Center on the northwest side. From the outside, the Center is pleasant enough: a light-filled, red sandstone structure that complements the original building, with a contemporary University of Utah architectural style (an example, another, and another).

I rarely stop to look inside, which is a shame because within is a magnificent, multi-storied installation of math-related artwork by Utah artist Anna Campbell Bliss. It's visually engaging, intellectually stimulating, playful and whimsical, even. This got me thinking about the relationship between math and art in general.

So, I did a library catalog basic (general keyword) search for math and art. One title in the results, "Fragments of Infinity: A Kaleidoscope of Math and Art" caught my eye. In the catalog record, in the left column, I saw the subject heading mathematics in art. When I clicked on that link, the catalog brought back five more books, including "Art for a House of Mathematics", a book about Anna Bliss' installation. Jackpot!

While looking at the catalog records for those six books, I continued to click and follow lots of interesting subject headings which led to more subject headings (and so on). I never would have come up with all these concepts on my own:

• mathematics--pictorial works
• mathematics in architecture
• geometry in art
• art--mathematics
  
• symbolism of numbers
• Islamic art and symbolism
• decoration and ornament--mathematics
• repetitive patterns (decorative arts)
• fractals
  

Really, I could go on and on. Following subject heading links is a fantastic way to find additional, related resources. It can also help to build your vocabulary about a topic.

Now I'm going to curl up with a good book I found, "Gödel, Escher, and Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid".

Killing Two Birds with One Stone Statue

Over the weekend, I had a patron come to the Fine Arts reference desk who was doing research on the Temple of Zeus in Olympia, Greece. She was looking for research articles about it and also wanted images to include in a class presentation. I knew just the resource she should use, JSTOR*, because she could do one search and get everything she needs.

JSTOR (short for Journal Storage) is one of the best all-around article databases out there. It offers complete, digitized and searchable back issues of significant research publications in every imaginable discipline, from Art to Physics to Economics to Women’s Studies. So, you can do a search and it’ll bring back results with full-text articles scanned right from the published journals.

Anyway, the JSTOR folks recently added an image-filtering feature to their search box. After you look through the article results, you can click on the Images in JSTOR tab and it highlights the exact pages in articles that have images on your topic. This includes photographs, statistical charts and graphs, scientific diagrams, etc.

In addition, there’s another tab for Images in ARTstor, a database with 500,000 images (and still growing) of art, architecture, clothing, interior design, historical artifacts, posters, videos, maps, and much more. Under this tab you’ll see thumbnail images found by searching for the same topic in ARTstor. When you click on an image, it will open a new window with a larger version that you can download and save. Perfect for PowerPoint presentations.

The student’s search for “Temple of Zeus” and Olympia was very successful in finding articles and images. Mileage may vary. You may need to change your search terms just a bit to get more images from ARTstor.

* As always, if you're a member of the University of Utah community, you can gain access to both the JSTOR and the ARTstor databases through the Article Databases list, linked from the Marriott Library homepage.