Teaching math through art seems incongruous if you believe in the
“right brain/left brain” theory. But disproving this apparent
incongruency is the mission that John Sims, professor and coordinator
of mathematics at the Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota,
Fla., has undertaken.
“I don’t buy into this left brain/right brain thing of art on one
side and math on the other,” Sims says. “Most people think that art and
math are very separate, but they don’t have to be. I want to present
math as a creative enterprise and show that it can be taught creatively
and visually.”
Students attend The Ringling School to earn a bachelor of fine arts
degree. The school — founded in 1931 by John Ringling of circus fame
— is a private, independent, four-year college of visual arts and
design. It also offers animation and technology training.
Sims, who has studied in Germany, is a working artist and
mathematician who earned a math degree from Antioch College. He also is
a Ph.D. candidate at Wesleyan University, where Ringling found him
teaching calculus and offered him the opportunity to develop the
school’s math curriculum.
Sims’s art has been exhibited around the country. This summer, he
will present his ideas on “Pythagoras’ Theorem, Triangles, Triples, and
Art” — and his “Time Sculpture: a 21st Century Clock” at conferences
in Spain and Israel.
At Ringling, Sims has created courses such as visual mathematics,
creative geometry, mathematics and physics for animators, and art and
ideas of mathematics. Dr. Tina Beer, Ringling’s dean of liberal arts,
says Sims’s approach to teaching both math and art has brought a new
dimension to the campus — not only in the implementation of his
philosophy, but also in connecting the community outside the campus to
Ringling and the larger world of art and design.
That is exactly what Sims’s teaching did for former student, Chris
Sampson, who says he barely made it out of high school geometry.
