After Watching Nick Sayers interview with Susan Gerofsky

Stop 1: Math isn’t just “being good at numbers”

“I found mental arithmetic and numbers just really terrifying… I had this belief… that I was bad at maths.” [5:28–5:59]

“I still feel like I’m sort of not great… when the person in the shop gave me change, I felt really anxious… have they given me the right change... it's really complicated ” [8:40-9:08]

“Inside my brain, numbers have massive significance… I’m massively superstitious about them.” [29:01–29:06]

Nick Sayers returns multiple times to the idea that numbers made him anxious, and that this feeling didn’t magically disappear. This made me stop because it challenges the common assumption that “loving math = being confident with calculation.” His story highlights that math can be meaning-making rather than speed or accuracy. What’s even more interesting is that, while he describes himself as “not great,” he clearly works fluently with numbers in practice—remembering quantities used in installations (like bottle counts), working with scale, and making precise decisions for his drawing machine. That contrast makes me think about math identity: people can be competent and creative in mathematical thinking while still carrying anxiety from earlier experiences.

Stop 2: Math-art as social commentary (not just “geometry is pretty”)

The mathematical sculptures made from everyday waste—plastic bottles, stirrers, train tickets, toothpicks, and more—[21:02–22:18] stood out because he doesn’t treat math-art as a clever visual trick, like “here’s a sphere” or “here’s symmetry.” He connects mathematical form to social meaning: the materials (plastic bottles, coffee stirrers, toothpicks) point directly to consumption and waste, and the idea of a sphere as an “endless” surface becomes a metaphor for the endless accumulation of landfill. This made me realize that math-art can be more than illustrating math concepts—it can help us feel the consequences of real-world systems. The math isn’t the final point; it becomes a language for raising questions about what we are producing, throwing away, and normalizing.

This theme deepens as he talks about the destruction of the Aral Sea [1:41:45], describing sandcastles made from toxic, salt-laden sand on boards, alongside images of rusting ship hulls left behind by environmental collapse [1:46:21]. He then brings in the Hilbert–Moore curve [1:47:08]—a space-filling curve where “squiggles are added to squiggles,” and the paradox is that a one-dimensional line, through infinite iteration, can fill a two-dimensional space. He uses this mathematical idea as a metaphor for “space-filling” empires: political systems that expand, occupy, and reorganize land and resources until they dominate an entire region. In his discussion, this includes the Soviet Union’s reshaping of the Aral Sea, but he also gestures to broader histories of empire-building—such as the Timurid dynasty, and European colonization through Spain, Portugal, and England—as different examples of how empires attempt to “fill” space and exert control over it [1:51:14].

What made me stop is how naturally he treats mathematics (fractals, iteration, space-filling) as a medium for critique. The curve isn’t just a fascinating object; it becomes a way to think about colonizing space, taking over space, and the environmental aftermath of political decisions. It shows how math-art can connect geometry and pattern to history, power, and ecological damage—making abstract structures emotionally and ethically legible.


Stop 3: Making the invisible visible

“I got thinking about how the gears of a bike actually create spirograph patterns…” [34:38–34:59]

This stop felt like a window into mathematical thinking, even though he doesn’t label himself as a serious mathematician. He notices an everyday phenomenon (gears + motion), plays with it visually, and then starts asking structural questions about why/how the patterns change. What matters most is the inquiry process: experimenting, noticing regularities, and then linking the complexity of patterns to underlying structure (such as prime factorization). It suggests that mathematics is not only something we “learn first and apply later”—it can emerge from sustained curiosity and pattern-hunting.

This idea becomes even more vivid in the image of the sun’s paths through the seasons [1:11:53]. In winter, when the tree has no leaves, sunlight passes through and reaches the bottom of the tree; in summer, the leaves form a dense canopy and the sun is blocked. In a single image, you can “see” the progression of seasons—something we cannot normally perceive all at once with our natural eyes. That made me stop because it feels like imagination becoming alive: mathematics and art working together to reveal patterns that exist in nature but are usually hidden by time, scale, or the limits of human perception. It’s also striking that the result looks ordered and beautiful—less like random noise and more like a kind of natural design. In that sense, the artwork doesn’t just represent the world; it helps us notice that the world already contains structure worth studying.

Response to the question:"What does this artist’s work offer for math–art connections, and what does it offer you as a math/science teacher?"

Nick Sayers’ work shows that math–art connections are not just about making “pretty geometry.” His pieces use mathematical ideas as ways to see and think—making invisible structures visible, compressing time into a single image, and revealing order in everyday motion and in nature. At the same time, his work shows that mathematical form can carry social meaning: using waste materials and ideas like “endlessness” or “space-filling” turns math into a language for questioning consumption, environmental collapse, and histories of empire. In this sense, math and art are connected not only through shared patterns, but through shared purposes such as interpretation, storytelling, and critique.

As a math teacher, this offers me clear pedagogical possibilities. It encourages me to design learning that begins with curiosity, lived experience, and when possible, making, and then to use mathematics to explain, refine, and deepen what students notice as they move toward more formal concepts. This supports a classroom norm that values multiple forms of mathematical competence; students who feel anxious about computation can still think mathematically through noticing, designing, modeling, and explaining patterns. Finally, his work made me realize how math and art can work together to open ethical and social conversations, making mathematics feel more human, creative, and connected to the world students live in.