Islamic art and architecture - Cassie

One of the electives we are being offered is a class on Islamic art and architecture. I thought this would be good to take both because it sounded interesting and because I am going to be spending a lot of time learning wood carving while here, and I wanted to understand the symbolic implications of what I am carving. For our first class, we learned about five hugely prevalent characteristics of Islamic art: tessellations, complex star polygons, linear repeat patterns, arabesques, and Arabic calligraphy. Each has their own known symbolism. Tessellations imply infinity, complex star polygons are an abstract picture of the universe, linear repeat patterns symbolize our experience of rhythm and time, Arabesques symbolize the organic earth with its underlying structures, and it is through calligraphy that the Divine intention is expressed explicitly in Islamic art. We spent the first half of class looking at pictures of art and identifying these elements in them, looking at the different way they can be used and getting a feel for how they look and fit together.
            Each of the elements, while beautiful and artfully free flowing between one another, are entirely based on mathematics of angles and proportions. They also serve purposes other than beauty sometimes. For example, linear repeat patterns are used to stop a tessellation, keeping it for multiplying into infinity. After we learned about all of this we applied some knowledge by each making our own complex star polygons. Beginning with a circle and using highly precise angles and overlapping boxes we created an intricately beautiful and mathematic piece of art for the fridge of our host families. I tried to post a picture of mine but it did not work, I will post one soon hopefully.