I must admit that art museums are often tiresome to me. Large galleries are a sensory overload. Walking through one is an inundation of passive information in a generally sterile environment. In other words, it’s hard for me to actually experience the art. With exceptions, I am merely an observer rather than a participant. Part of what I enjoyed so much about the Chihuly pieces was their experiential nature. I felt that I was part of the art, and that my being present actually mattered.

If I had to summarize my impression of the installation, I would use the phrase “entwinement of the inorganic with the organic”. While walking through the nearly uncountable species of plants in the gardens there are pieces of ornamental glass decorating the landscape. Sometimes it actually appears as if a plant is growing glass branches. In one of my favorite pieces there are tubes of iridescent blue glass standing amongst an army of cool green bamboo. It almost looks as if the two could easily coexist together in nature. Around every corner was a merger of glass and plant. I almost felt like a child on an Easter egg hunt, just waiting for the next treasure to appear unexpectedly. If you’d like to see more examples of what I mean you can see Emily and my pictures here.

While I wouldn’t count Chihuly as my favorite artist (this “honor” is held by James Turrell), I have to thank him for his creative methods. Both Turrell and Chihuly design art which is experiential rather than merely observable. Both use light and color with beautiful effect. Both blur the lines between organic and inorganic. These traits, to me, embody art at its fullest.

I have such a hard time when someone (usually a speaker who knows nothing or relatively nothing about mathematics) uses an analogy that paints the field as the dull black and white objectified reality. First, this is not math. This is some strange twisted view of math that either you learned in second grade or that you have been fed by our culture. This view is pervasive and ugly. Math has so much more to do with elegance and beauty and the greater search of making sense of possibility.

I’d like to see two changes in the popular perception of mathematics. First, I’d like to see a greater effort by the mathematics community to make their material accessible to the popular masses. I believe this can be done by pursuing some of the artistic or philosophical implications and questions brought on by a particular technical result or problem. There are a few people who have done this, and off the top of my head I’d name Ian Stewart as an example. For instance, if one really looks at Euler’s Relation, and digests it like one would a Monet, I believe there’s just as much beauty to behold.

Second, I’d like to see postmodern theologians taking a more mature view of mathematics. Rather than painting it as the personification of the Modern era (and thus mostly an unhelpful and inorganic subject), I’d like each and every one of them to gain a familiarity of the subject and what it means for the twenty-first century. With this aim, I suggest that these readers refer to Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem, with some of the philosophical questions behind it.

Check out the site. And if you have a moment try to engage one of the pieces. Thank you Justin Mullins for taking such a simple idea and running with it.