Wave Magazine Online Jacksonville University News Hub
JU alum and mathematician Stephanie Glen is turning heads again — and maybe even blowing some minds — with “The Sum of Cube + Cubism,” a collaborative exhibition with well-known socially charged artist Overstreet Ducasse that explores “the numbers behind art and the artistry behind numbers.”
Ducasse and Glen, who received her Master of Arts in Teaching at JU in 2006 with a major in Mathematics Education, are featured in a lengthy cover article in Folio Weekly that discusses the exhibit, which opened with a crowded reception July 26 and runs through Aug. 4 at CoRK Studio East in the CoRK Arts District, 2689 Rosselle St., Riverside. The pair spent six months working on it.
“Our goal was to surprise people with the math-art blend,” Glen told Wave Weekly. “We ran a competition the opening night, where guests were given a Scantron sheet and asked to guess who painted which ‘cube.’ There were 24 in all. Most people thought it would be easy, that because I am a mathematician and Overstreet is a professional artist, that they would be able to tell who painted what. Not such an easy task!”
Glen said the duo met their goal of opening people’s eyes about the connection between math and art.
“Math doesn’t exist as a standalone subject; although most people know you need it for the sciences, they didn’t know how closely it’s connected with art … so many students suffer from a phobia of math. And an equal number of students are not being exposed to the arts in schools, thanks to budget cuts. Math should be taught as a fun subject, perhaps through a connection with art, as we’ve demonstrated. What’s more fun than painting math?
The pair spent many hours brainstorming the theme, she said, and the exhibit’s wall mural alone took them both two weeks of working around the clock, pasting 5,940 squares.
“As we both have studios at CoRK, actually having the show was easy,” Glen said.
According to a news release, Ducasse has always kept math as a behind-the-scenes component to his already intellectually charged body of work. In partnering with Glen, the two are able to explore deep mathematical philosophy in a visual medium. Shape and color merge with proof and theorum.
Glen has served as an adjunct professor at JU. She is a published author and runs the website statisticshowto.com. Glen was thrust into the public’s eye with her OneSpark contribution, The Number Hunter, a children’s television show exploring mathematics in the Discovery Channel motif (for a story on that, see http://waveweekly.ju.edu/?p=6535).
For more on the exhibit, visit http://corkartsdistrict.tumblr.com/.