Black Artist Inspired by Pi, the Intersection of Math & Art: Everyone Deserves a Slice
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On 3/14 — Pi Day — let’s remember that math should be about addition, not subtraction. It should include all of us. The value of that is … incalculable.
The circle is one of our most celebrated forms. Either as an object of the mathematician’s mind or living on the edges of the moon, the circle is simply beautiful and beautifully simple. When you divide its outer body (circumference) by its core element (diameter), you will get something constant and magically special: the birth of Pi = 3.14159. As a non-repeating, never-ending irrational wild number, Pi is endowed with enormous complexity and the capacity to capture the imagination and curiosity of collective minds in search of the truth and beauty of nature, as well as the capacity for human expression through the lens of science, mathematics and art.
Every March 14 (3/14), we celebrate Pi Day, a national holiday started in 1988 by physicist Larry Shaw at San Francisco’s Exploratorium, a museum that interrogates the world through science, technology and art. In 2009, the U.S. House of Representatives passed Resolution 224, designating March 14 as National Pi Day. The resolution “encourages schools and educators to observe the day with appropriate activities that teach students about Pi and engage them about the study of mathematics.”
Since 2009, Pi Day has become an international event where celebrants eat pies and pizzas, as well as recite the digits of Pi. This geek holiday has gone mainstream with a wide range of events — from the store 7/11 running special $3.14 pizza deals to the NASA Pi Day Challenge. I contributed to Pi love fest, too, by creating a collection of Pi-based quilts and the Pi Day anthem, featuring internet sensation and math-musician, Vi Hart.
Beyond Pi, mathematics in general should be celebrated. It is a beautiful language and powerful way of thinking that helps us explore the physical world; math gives us the tools to see, understand and express on levels deeper than our five senses can otherwise access. Alongside that, it is also a pathway to learn to think critically, abstractly and even creatively.
When liberated from the service of science, mathematics has its own integrity of expression, remarkable landscape, and capacity to inform and collaborate with the creative process across the arts. So Pi Day presents an opportunity not only to celebrate the digits of Pi and all things circular, but also to honor mathematics in a larger cultural context by contributing to who we have become as abstract-thinking Homo sapiens.
However, there is also an opportunity to go beyond the festivities of Pi Day and reflect on the role of mathematics as a gatekeeper, alienator and unwitting agent of division and even white supremacy. We see this played out in how mathematics is positioned around the complicated and sensitive issues of intelligence, as well as how mathematics instruction has traumatized millions of students. It can be seen in how failure in mathematics has dwarfed and diverted the professional dreams of countless people.
When you look at how mathematics literacy and achievement are related to earning power and economic mobility, you can see a space that favors some groups over others, and where women, Black people and even artists are written off from an early age. As long as STEM education, museums and curricula do not address the political and demographic dimension of this divide in critically actionable ways, then the pursuit of inclusion and real social and cultural justice will ring hollow.
While mathematics can be seen to divide us, it can also be an agent of freedom and access. The late Bob Moses, mathematics educator, civil rights legend, founder of the Algebra Project, and author of “Radical Equation: Civil Rights from Mississippi to the Algebra Project,” advocated for mathematics literacy as a tool for liberation and as necessary as civil rights. He states:
“The most urgent social issue affecting poor people and people of color is economic access. In today’s world, economic access and full citizenship depend crucially on math and science literacy. I believe that the absence of math literacy in urban and rural communities throughout this country is an issue as urgent as the lack of registered Black voters in Mississippi was in 1961.”
Mathematics is a parameter of human cognition. Its facility is as necessary as walking through space, as walking through the economy and walking across the lines of race, class, and gender. This is why it is important to advocate for proactive outreach and creative connective mathematics curricula, where we all are invited and nurtured to sit at the circle of mathematics. At the same time, it is also critical for all of us to understand the importance of being in this circle, and to resist the historical inertia of exclusion and claim space, claim desire, and claim entry.
So on this Pi Day, let us find the circles of unity that connect both halves of our brains, our different cultures, our complex communities, our nation and our planet as we continue the quilted work of creating and discerning the wonderful codes and patterns of nature. Also, let us reflect on the work needed to increase mathematics literacy for us all. Let us honor the creative nature of mathematics and its connection to culture in inclusive ways as a community and as a culture — because mathematics is for everyone and Pi is for everyone. Pi Day is for everyone.
Photo above: John Sims
John Sims is a Sarasota-based multimedia math artist, writer and activist. Currently he is artist in residence at the Exploratorium in San Francisco for the 35th Annual Pi Day Celebration and where his Pi quilts and MathArt film will be on exhibition until the end of March.
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About Pi Day: The Exploratorium initiated Pi Day in 1988 by the late staff physicist, tinkerer, and media specialist, Larry Shaw. In 2009, the House of Representatives passed Resolution 224, designating March 14 as National Pi Day. The resolution “encourages schools and educators to observe the day with appropriate activities that teach students about Pi and engage them about the study of mathematics.”
One of the events at the museum is “Poetry, Pi & Pies” featuring two poet laureates, his film “Artis Mathematicae” and pies by Pietisserie (15 pies, 5 visual categories).
About John’s Pi-Inspired Body of Work: Before Pi Day became an official holiday, John worked on visualizing the decimal expansion of Pi by arranging the Pi digits in a special way then color coding them, making digital quilts.
He also tried various bases, including binary with black and white, and base 3 with red, white and blue, creating “American Pi”. To physically make Pi quilts, John went to Alma Sue Quilt Shop for assistance, where he collaborated with Amish quilters to yield 13 large math-art quilts.
To add a human quality, he designed 5 Pi dresses for those who could appreciate both urban math-art geekness and dress shapes of the 60’s, perfect for someone like Lady Gaga or Erika Badu, who might be looking for some Pi Day fashion. Going beyond the visuals, John had to hear Pi too. So he mapped Pi in the key of b flat creating a Blues composition that the late great Kenny Drew Jr. recorded for him.
Then he teamed up with YouTube sensation math-musician, Vi Hart, to cover the first 170 numbers of Pi in the spoken digit “The Pi Day Anthem.”
John’s work of quilts, dresses, poetry, video installation and music based mostly on Pi, comes together in the exhibition, SquareRoots: A Quilted Manifesto, featuring John’s alter ego Johannes Curtis Schwarzenstein, the AfroGermanJewishMathArtPoet, his testimony to the magical connection between mathematics and art. Here is the exhibition video:
About Exploratorium Pi Day Events: “Given his extensive work making pi and mathematics inclusive and accessible through their aesthetics and social relevance, he was a natural fit for the museum’s annual celebration, ” said Sam Sharkland, Program Developer in charge of producing Pi Day events. The Exploratorium will display two of Sims’ pi inspired quilts (Seeing Pi and Civil Pi) as well as a selection of math art videos created by Sims.
“Mathematics is a beautiful language that helps us explore the physical world and beyond. So when the time comes to honor Pi Day, every March 14th, there is an opportunity to not only celebrate the digits of Pi, or all things circular, pizza, and fruit pies, but also there is chance to honor the presence of mathematics in nature, art and the culture that shape who we have become as humans.” – John Sims
As a part of his residency, Medicine for Nightmares Bookstore and Gallery in the Mission District of San Francisco, will be hosting Sims’ BlackPi/AfroDixie: A Critical Confiscation Theory, on view March 4-25, 2022. This exhibition intersects two large systems of work: “SquareRoot: A Quilted Manifesto” which deals with the mathematics versus art divide and the other one, “Recoloration Proclamation” responds to the sounds and symbols of a Confederate state of mind. Also there will be a poetry reading featuring selections from the Patrice Lumumba Anthology on March 8th, and a Pi Day screening of his film Arte Mathematicae on March 14th.It is a great way to celebrate math + art as a way to discuss current social/cultural topics. I’m working with John Sims, the artist/mathematician and he is the artist in residency this month at the Exploratorium in SF (they founded Pi Day in 1988, House of Representatives made it a national holiday in 2009).
