Math makes art in Charles City Arts Center’s featured exhibit

By Travis Fischer, tkfischer@charlescitypress.com

The Charles City Arts Center is preparing its first featured exhibit of 2025 with a display of digitally created pieces by Andres Soemadi.

“He’s been coming to Art-A-Fest for a couple of years and has won best artist two years in a row,” said Arts Center Director Emily Kiewel.

A physics instructor at North Iowa Area Community College, Soemadi uses math to create his art with the computer program Mathematica. Built to create graphs and charts, Soemadi instead uses the software as his digital canvas, coding in complex formulas to create his designs.

The Arts Center has 32 pieces of Soemadi’s work to display this month, each including a sample of the code used to create the digital image. Soemadi is planned to be at the opening reception on Friday, Feb. 7, from 5 to 7 p.m. to meet with visitors and discuss how he turns code into art.

“I’m very curious to see people’s reaction to his work,” said Kiewel.