ART in the Classroom?

The picture on the left  is by Sam Gilliam (American). It is called Patchwork/Terry, 1980. Sam Gilliam is a significant figure in the development of abstract color field painting. He gained recognition in the late 1960s for his upstretched (or “draped”) canvases. Here, Gilliam uses an irregular polygonal shape, exposing its painted edges to suggest three-dimensionality. He covered the canvas with thick layers of acrylic paint, then cut it into shapes. Finally, he reassembled the colorful, textured fragments as though making a quilt.

The picture to the right is by George L. K. Morris (American, 1905-1976). It is called Mixed Doubles, 1946.

I could not choose just one of them, and I was thinking that for a math class both pieces of art could be used. I found a pin on Pinterest of a fun hands-on activity for learning about angle measures and their relationships with lines (parallel and perpendicular lines). In the activity the students’ desk would have different stripes of tape crossing each other and the student would measure some of the angles and then have to figure out the measure of the other angles based on the angles they measured. I thought that either piece of art would also work for the activity. Another activity I thought of was naming all of the different shapes they see within the pieces of art, and then finding the area and perimeter of each of the shapes.  

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