Math in Art

I have already thought about creating a career unit in my math class to highlight all the ways adults use math in their jobs. Visiting the museum was a fun trip, because it got me thinking about all the way artists use math. In the Belleek Porcelain exhibit, I thought about how much detail went into sculpting the porcelain, but also how much precision must go into first creating the dough. This would be a great way to talk about ratios, fractions, and percentages. The ingredients work together and it is important to keep the ingredients in the right proportions. If too much liquid is added, the dough will not mold well or might not ever dry. If the dough is too dry, it might be too hard to shape. Doubling or tripling the recipe will result in different amounts of each ingredient, but again they need to be kept in the same proportion and increased by the same percentage. My class could also talk about how long it will take items to dry and if the time differs based on item size, temperature, or altitude. This could also end up being a fun project for students if this lesson was around a holiday. Once they created the recipe of a desired size, they could actually make porcelain ornaments for Christmas or other figurines for other holidays. While the porcelain collection in the Georgia Museum of Art was mostly white, there could be other math lessons in colored porcelain or painting the figures. Paint is also made with certain ingredients in a specific recipe so that the liquid dries with the particular characteristics. Incorporating art with something they could actually see and create would be a fun project for any aspiring artists being forced to take math in middle school.