I was always good at math. What is math anyway really? A school subject using numbers or the framework of the universe? Mathematics is a tool to create just like every other program. Without emotion or hesitation, we can use math to find out where we might go next if we try this or that. Or we might be a bit more exact.
How is Art different than math? Just another tool? Let’s speak of visual arts, perhaps sculpture. And hmm, addition. I will compare mathematics and arts using the categories of addition and sculpture.
On the face of it, math and art are opposites. They evoke opposite images and emotions. The words themselves are linked with gender, history, creation and observation. Math is a tool as we discussed, but what of sculpture? I can use addition to find practical answers to psychic problems. If I have two ideas, or two friends over, and will have two more ideas, or two more friends are coming over, I know I will soon have four friends or ideas.
Most will admit I can be sure of this answer. That four ideas or friends or whatever coming from the additions of two and two of anything is correct, not only probable but definite.
The sculptor then tries to use his surmised tool to find similar answers. He forms a goddess in his clay. The woman of his dreams, with soft lips and high cheekbones. He knows this product of his hands, this woman. She is his future wife. He started with nothing but some clay and wound up staring at his wife, a visual of her anyway.
This particular artist did not plan to create his wife that day. He just went on his daily business of creation, and then he saw her. Just like math predicted our four friends, art predicted the face of this sculptor’s future wife.
Is art a tool then? Yes and no. It was the method to find the wife’s face, but that wife would be different for each seeker. Four is four is four. So is math an exact science or tool, and art a roundabout type of blurry predictor of future faces, or buildings?
First of all, when we add two and two, math has lost its exactness. Two of what exactly? Two voices or glasses of water, plus two songs gives us a different product than adding two couples of humans together. Math at its core, is only exact because it starts with the very essence of anything. Without describing what you are adding or multiplying, your process is sizeless, without any exact magnitude.
Art is actually similar. Unless they believe they are psychic, people usually create art without future in mind. They either enjoy the woodworking or painting, or in our case, sculpture. They would like to build something that causes joy in the creation and evokes emotion in the product.
Artists are really just putting two and two together like mathematicians. Our sculptor used his talents, which are God given. So he used God, and Himself, as two creators to create the vision of his future, a wife made of God and of herself, of him. He saw his wife’s face because he loves to create and he tapped into the source of all, God. Whether the woman he marries has a slightly different neckline or a mole on her face, the face of his sculpted woman is the inexact vision of his future.
We can make math inexact similarly.. I would like to add two humans together. The product will be a baby. Whatever God decides ( or is it science deciding) to give that baby from her parents, she will have. She is one from two, humanity from God, love from singularity. The four friends coming in the future and the lovely face of the artists wife are proof of the exactness of a giant screaming big banging group of human entities being the perfect product of the existence of God and the love he has for us.
