Math art individual writeup

Although art often uses math in interesting ways, I haven't done an art project relating to math before. It was an interesting experience as a student, and as a teacher, I may want to do something like it in the future. 

At first, it was difficult to understand the original artwork, especially with the opaque shapes involved. Chris helped a lot in piecing together the shape. I suggested making the shape from a hard metal wire but we ended up using pipe cleaners. It was satisfying creating more of the building blocks for the shape with the class, even if we ran out of time to talk a bit more about the implications of the shape, and the history of "non-euclidean" polyhedra like this one. 

I think the artwork my group chose is perhaps not as directly relevant to the BC curriculum as some other groups' projects, but the assignment as a whole is relevant to my teaching practice. There may be a balance needed between letting the students pick their art pieces freely, and making sure the project still teaches them something that's in the curriculum. 

Another point to consider is varying degrees of access to art supplies, techniques, and extensive time and patience (like with origami). Perhaps suggesting some simpler, cheaper art supplies, and maybe providing some could mitigate this issue. Overall, I think high school students could make many fascinating math art pieces!