An Artist’s Apology: “I contain multitudes”
Year: 2024 Authors: Chawne Kimber
Core claim
Mathematical identity and artistic practice can be deeply connected through social context and intersectional experience, even when that connection is not visually obvious.
Topics
identity, social justice, textile art, mathematics and art
Domains
mathematics community, mathematics education, mathematical identity, textile art, quilting, contemporary art
Methods
reflective talk, journey-based narrative, personal testimony
Media
Paper text
The text below is the locally extracted OCR/Markdown version of the paper. Raw PDF files remain local and are not published here.
Bridges 2024 Conference Proceedings
An Artist’s Apology: “I contain multitudes”
Chawne Kimber
Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia, USA; ckimber@wlu.edu
When one is a Professor of Mathematics and later unintentionally becomes an Artist too, these planes of existence can feel independent of each other while they are also quite intimately connected. Despite open acknowledgement of the intertwining of these identities, one can feel caught off-guard by frequently asked questions that are technical: “How does math influence one’s artwork? And vice versa?” The invitation for this presentation became the impetus finally to frame some coherent responses. The answers in this case are not easily explained since, by design, they are rarely directly represented by typical math-inspired visual elements in the art. Yet, the answers become manifestly clear once the viewer is willing to give credence to all the dimensions of one’s identity and the intersectional outcomes in social contexts. In this journey-based talk we will reflect on this internal and external identity conflict, the context of the Mathematics community, (mathematics and) social justice, and manifestations of these three things in textile art.
Figure 1: Cover of MAA Focus, 2022 [1]
Figure 2: still not (2019), 72” square, photo by Thomas Kosa for Lafayette College Galleries. Artwork now in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. [2]
References
[1] A. Henrich. “Chawne Kimber: Mathematician/Quilter/Activist/Leader.” MAA Focus, vol.42, no. 4, 2022, pp. 22-25. [2] C. Kimber. Cottoning On. Grossmann Gallery, Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania, USA, June 7-August 3, 2019.