Kolam is the Math Art

Kolams are decorative geometrical patterns that adorn the entrances of households and places of worship in India and it's called Rangoli a...lso. There are several types of Rangoli are there.Today I would like to talk about only Kolam.

Kolam is the mother art for my Art journey. I learned this art from my mother. In my childhood I didn't went any art class.Honestly I learned all my drawings from Kolam.Not only me so many women in India 😀.Some people will say I don't know how to draw. But all the southern part of women has to do kolam mandatory . Kolam has the amazing concept of Dots to Drawing.This concept makes everyone to draw.I have added kolam in my Smart Arts curriculum.

Kolam is a line drawing of curves and loops around a regular grid of points. The traditional South Indian kolam, based on a grid of points is known as Kolam and Muggulu in Andhra Pradesh, Rangavalli in Karnataka . The folk-art is handed down through generations of women from historic times, dating perhaps thousand years or more.Womens used to do this kolam with rice powder but now ready made are available. At my home town This margazhi month is very famous. All the girls and women makes their colorful eye-catching kolam in everyday of this month.

Tamil Nadu Traditional art “Suzhi Kolam” is a geometrical line drawing composed of lines and curved loops, drawn around a grid pattern of dots.Suzhi Kolam is a special kind of graph where the intersection points called as vertices and lines connecting these vertices are called as edges.

Kolam skills are considered as mark of grace, dexterity, discipline and concentration. Also, Kolam expresses mathematical ideas.

Creating Kolam pattern is expected to be useful for activating/training human brain. It is a wonder that a woman with no math knowledge (except counting) is able to draw any type of complex pattern without much effort. No one use rulers to make the Puli for kolam.They show their perfection in geometrical presentation, symmetry, straight lines, visual imagination,curves etc., People capture, encode, and decode the image in their memory with much clarity before reproducing it on the ground. It is related with math fibonacci series and graph.Kolam can be called as an “ethnomathematical” activity.

Today have taken up a number of corporate and innovative career options for financial independence and self-sufficiency. This has led to a marked reduction in the number of women who regularly practise this art. There is no formal transmission of the art. The next generation is forgetting the importance and the relevance of the tradition.

Dr.Siromoney and his team in 1974 have introduced Matrix Grammars and Kolam Array Grammars.The ethno-mathematical view and the corresponding study of kolam patterns have been done extensively by others like Ascher (1991) and Gerdes (1989).So many people are still doing their research about kolam in spite of mathematical view.There are more articles there in web about this topic.

Please pass this beautiful math art to your kids.Recently I am teaching this art to my 8 year old daughter. She is so interested with Kolam.You can produly teach Kolam to your

kids ( including boys).Because they are learning Art with