Art Historical and Mathematical Exploration

Lily Guo is a Neuroscience major junior and Yinting Zhong is a Mathematics major senior at Colorado College. The stories of Olympian gods are always fascinated us since we were children. However, we did not have a chance to explore more about Ancient Greek mythology until this spring. The venture grants offered us this great opportunity to explore our passion for the myths and explore outside classroom settings. This project also played a valuable role in bringing what we learned from our majors to investigate the field of Olympian sculptures, helping us to develop interdisciplinary and interactive thinking.

After researching, the Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle attracted our attention because it is the only Olympic-related park in the United States. We also found out that the location of this park used to be a fuel storage and transfer facility by the Union Oil Company of California (UNOCAL). Due to the petroleum product contamination left in this area by the industrial operations, people later decided to transfer it to the Olympic Sculpture Park. Significantly, this park now serves as a relaxing space for the citizens as the greenest area in downtown Seattle. Therefore, we dived into the world of the Olympic from an art historical and mathematical lens, exploring what impacts this park has brought to Seattle.

In this project, we visited the Olympic Sculpture Park in Seattle and conducted research about the art history and mathematics influence of modern and after-modern sculptures.

One of our RESEARCH QUESTIONS is – what are the differences in various sculptures at Olympic Sculpture Park and how would they impact and incorporate with the surrounding? Specifically, we are interested in discovering what the geometric, visual, subject-matter and stylistic differences are between a few specific sculptures. When comparing the features of several sculptures, we utilized the comparison method which is intensively used in art analysis. We also employed some techniques in modeling the shapes of those sculptures with some geometric shapes and mathematical equations. This gave us an understanding of how geometry is functioned and displayed as meaning in arts. Furthermore, this research explored the potential impacts and values provided by the sculptures on society and the environment in Seattle.

Art and mathematics are closely related to each other and they are both crucial to the residential life of the people in Seattle. Art is the product of the artists’ wisdom, offering joy to its audiences. From the art history perspective and social impacts, one of the major strategies that artists and critics use is the comparison between two different but related artworks. In this case, Lily compared two pairs of sculptures, which were built from 1960 to 2022 in the park, about visual, subject-matter, and stylistic differences. One of the pairs of sculptures to compare was Echo in 2011 by Jaume Plensa and Eye Benches I, II, and III in 1996–97 by Louise Bourgeois. The two pieces were created in the modern and after-modern periods. Another pair of sculptures, or garden settings specifically, was built at a similar time point. They are Stinger (1967–68) and Wandering Rocks (1967–74) by Tony Smith. Intriguingly, even though both of the sculptures were built by the same artist, they showed huge differences in their power and gave various feelings to the pedestrians and visitors. Moreover, by physically being at the park, Lily knew more about how those sculptures were associated with their surroundings, interpreting the impacts of the sculptures on society and the environment in Seattle.

From a mathematical viewpoint, Yinting took pictures from various angles of sculptures and tried to match them with three-dimensional geometric shapes. By analyzing different combinations of shapes, Yinting interpreted how geometry influences the presentation of arts. Yinting also tried to transfer the three-dimensional sculptures into two-dimensional views and model them with mathematical equations. She aimed to discover what mathematical features could contribute to the beauty of arts. 

• Comparison 1

Eye Benches and Echo are two architectures that are physically close to each other but serve very different functions in that place. Eye Benches are some giant, eye-shaped, comfortable outdoor seatings. Its interactiveness let the sculpture itself closely bound with its audience.

From the point of view of Mathematics, the eye benches can be modeled with different equations. For example, the pupil can be modeled with the ellipse equation, the iris is a quadratic equation, and the normal distribution can represent the eyelids. The Eye Benches were constructed with various continuous functions, which had rounded, arched, and curving features, bringing the audience a sense of softness and smoothness of the art piece.

Echo is more than 46 feet tall and audience close to it needs to lift their chin really high to see the whole view of it. It pictures the mountain nymph from Greek mythology, who offended the goddess Hera who is in charge of marriage, women, childbirth, and family.

• Comparison 2

Two architectures above were created by Tony Smith who is talented in using black, edged rocks. He could flexibly use the continuousness and discontinuousness to create a sense of interaction or stiffness in rocks, influencing his audience to interact with those architectures differently, even though they came from the same artist.

Stinger was originally titled "One Gate" but Smith ultimately named it Stinger after a cocktail intoxication. As he started his career as an architect, Smith was inspired by molecular and crystalline forms as he created Wandering Rocks, his first piece of work as an architect. This architect represents his homage to the Ryōan-Ji Zen garden in Kyoto, Japan. Life changed him, and he thanks life by a new form of art.

From the point of view of Geometry, both the Stinger and the Wandering Rocks have multiple corners, showing a sense of sharpness and seriousness. The color black also brought us calmness and stableness.

Our venture grant project raised awareness of the importance of art and mathematics in our daily lives. This is also an interdisciplinary field that will broaden people's horizons about how art and mathematics are intertwined. The project included the analysis of sculptures from multiple novel perspectives: aesthetic, spiritual, and mathematical. Our project also served as an excellent example of putting theory learned from class into real-world practices. Finally, our project established a solid foundation for future venture grants and related research, such as architecture-audience interactions studies. We enjoyed our trip a lot and learned a lot! :D

Thank you to the Keller Family for their generosity in funding our research project. We also would like to thank Dr. Tamara Bentley for advising us and helping us edit our research proposal.