Post-Museum Visit/Lesson Plan

Introduction

The fourth grade students have been to the exhibit, Cosmophilia, at the McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College. For the post-museum lesson, three of the objects decorated with geometric designs have been included in a math lesson on geometry. Figural representations are forbidden in Islamic religious art, so images seen in mosques and on other types of architecture and decorative objects are quite often based on geometry. Islamic artists excel in their use of geometry and tessellations in making designs. The designs are prized for their beauty, complexity, and cosmological significance.

The two textiles and the bowl share the common design elements of the rosette, the hexagon, and the star. The purpose of the exercises is to discover the origins of these shapes. Normally, artists would create their designs by drawing with a compass and straight edge. Instead, the students will be given a worksheet with the circular configurations already drawn with Geometer’s Sketchpad software.

Worksheet

Goals: 1. The students will learn the basis for making geometric shapes.

2. The students will identify the basic shapes that comprise the tessellation in a textile.

The first three exercises involve finding the shapes within the circle configuration. The students will use a straight edge to discover the shapes by connecting the points, and then color them in. They will then move on to a fourth exercise in which they will find the basic design elements in the tessellation in one of the textiles from the exhibition. In the drawn configuration on their worksheet, they will see if they can find the key shape, and color it in. These exercises will prepare the students for their next project which will be an art project in which they will create their own tessellations with tiles.

The exercises above can be adapted for older students. One such exercise is that of repeating the pattern of overlapping circles several times, and plotting out different types of grid patterns at the intersecting points. Another exercise would that of creating an eight point star and octagon shape, then making tessellations from the more complex shapes.

Art Project

Goal: The students will create a basic tessellation using decorate ceramic tiles.

The students will decorate their own tiles with designs elements from Islamic art. Ideally, they will use ceramic tiles (available at Home Depot) in a hexagon shape and a diamond shape. These two shapes can be combined to make a simple tessellation. Each child will make a block of nine tiles, and the blocks will be combined to decorate a wall area in the classroom.

For the Islamic art images and worksheet click on the Activities link.

References

Blair, Sheila and Bloom, Jonathan. Cosmophilia: Islamic Art from the David Collection,

Copenhagen. Chestnut Hill, MA: McMullen Museum of Art, 2006.

Islamic Art and Geometric Design: Activities for Learning. New York: Metropolitan

Museum of Art.