Yayoi Kusama Collage
Pumpkin, Leaf, or Flower
Pumpkin, Leaf, or Flower
SUPPLIES
- Each child should get 5 sheets of 9" x 12" colored paper (Art Closet): 1 sheet of green paper; 1 sheet blue; 1 sheet orange; 1 sheet yellow; 1 sheet red
- Sheet of small circle stickers - 1 per child (Art Closet)
- Black sharpie - 1 per child (Art Closet)
- Pencil - 1 per child (Art Closet)
- Glue stick - 1 per child (Art Closet)
- Scissors - 1 per child (from children's own supplies, but there are a few dozen as backup in the Art Closet)
- Black paint, small amount
- White paint, small amount
- Paper plates for black & white paint (2-3 kids can share each plate)
- Paper towels for cleaning paint off pencil erasers and cleanup at end - 1 roll per class (bring from home)
- Handout, make copies in teacher workroom - 1 per child (Art Closet)
- Color Printouts of images from lesson (Art Closet)
- Optional Poster of Kusama's work to display (Art Closet)
- Optional simple shape templates: pumpkin, leaf, flower (Art Closet) - for younger kids
GRADES TK-1st: instead of reading the Script below, you can read a book about Kusama's life called From Here to Infinity to the class before starting the collage (book is available in the Art Closet). Begin the lesson at "PAINTINGS."
SCRIPT
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Good Morning Friends!
Today we're going to learn about a famous artist named Yayoi Kusama. She is from Japan and is sometimes called the Princess of Polka Dots. Although she creates lots of different types of art — like paintings, sculptures, performances, and installations — they all have one thing in common: DOTS! She writes poetry and books, too. And she is considered one of the most important living artists in the world.
Kusama was born in Matsumoto City on the island of Honshu in Japan 89 years ago. She loved to paint and draw as a little girl and although her parents didn't want her to be an artist, she was determined. When her mom tore up her drawings, she made more. When she could not afford to buy art materials she used mud and sacks to make art. This is a drawing she made of her mom when she was 10 years old.
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Eventually, Kusama persuaded her parents to let her go to art school in Japan to study painting. In the late 1950s, several decades before I was born {Art Rep: tie it back to yourself} she moved from Japan to New York City because a lot of exciting art was happening there at that time. It must have been a bit frightening arriving in a big city with such a different culture from what she knew. But she was determined to conquer New York. She later wrote about her brave attitude, "I would stand up to them all with a single polka dot." In New York she met and inspired some of the most important artists of our time, including Andy Warhol, and her art was part of important art movements like POP ART.
{Art Rep you can define Pop Art if you like..."Back in the 1950s and '60s, Pop Art was a new kind of art where artists created simple, brightly colored, bold images of everyday objects. Pop Artists wanted to make art part of everyday life, something that everyone could enjoy.}
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Kusama is most famous for her sculptures and art installations. An "Installation" is a style of art that uses 3 Dimensional objects; it's not flat like a painting. It is supposed to make you change the way you see a space. Installation art can be in museums and galleries {Art Rep: point out red tentacle sculptures in Image #3} or in public spaces like a park {Art Rep: point out giant red polka-dot pumpkin}. And you can even sometimes walk all around the artwork or even INSIDE of it.
In fact, Kusama creates whole rooms full of dots that you can walk INTO. She calls these her "INFINITY ROOMS" and she creates them by installing hundreds of flashing colored LED lights into mirrored rooms. The pinpricks of light in the dark room reflect endlessly in the mirrors, making you feel like you are in an endless space. When you walk into one of her Infinity Rooms, the dots completely surround you and it's hard to tell where you end and the rest of the room begins!
Here is a picture of one of her Infinity Rooms:
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Yayoi Kusama tells the story of how when she was a little girl she had a dream that she was in a field of flowers when they all started talking to her. The heads of flowers were like dots that went on as far as she could see, and she felt as if she was disappearing into this field of endless dots. By adding circles all over everything, Kusama feels as if she is making the room and herself melt into, and become part of, the bigger universe. Kusama once said, "Our earth is only one polka dot among a million stars in the cosmos." To her, even our earth is one big dot! Here are a few more of her Infinity Rooms. You'll see Kusama in the first image:
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About 16 years ago, Yayoi Kusama created a special children's project in Australia called the "Obliteration Room" that has been recreated all around the world, even in Downtown Los Angeles not far from here. She paints a room completely white, even the TV, to create a blank space to decorate—like a giant blank canvas. Visitors are given circle stickers in bright colors to stick all over the walls and wherever they want. Here's a photo of one of her Obliteration Rooms:
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Look around the classroom right now. Do you see any circles? How many dots can you point out {Art Rep: take responses}. It's amazing how circles are everywhere and all the interesting things you can do with dots!
PAINTINGS
Yayoi Kusama began her career as a painter so long ago in Japan and she still paints today at age 89. In fact, she has painted every single day since she was 10 years old. Her paintings are always fun and bright, and covered with lots and lots of dots. In addition to dots, she paints patterns of lines and shapes and repeats them over and over. She often shows everyday objects, like pumpkins, sunflowers, leaves, and vegetables. We're going to look at some of her paintings now.
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The pumpkin is one of Kusama's favorite subjects. She has created pumpkin paintings, pumpkin sculptures, pumpkin Infinity Rooms, pumpkin charm bracelets, and pumpkin polka-dot print shoes. In this pumpkin painting (#8), look at the dots. Do you see how all the dots seem to flow down from the top of the pumpkins in rows? Kusama uses dots and lines to make our eyes move around her paintings.
SHOW IMAGE #9
What do you notice about this painting (#9)? {Take responses} The dots are different sizes: small, medium, and large. The larger dots on the pumpkin jump out at you: they look like they are closer. The smaller dots look farther away. This is one way that Yayoi Kusama shows dimension or depth in her painting, so her painting does not look flat.
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Here is a painting of a carrot, radishes, and pea pods. Does the pattern in the background almost look like it's moving? Kusama uses patterns (repeating lines and shapes) to add interest and movement to her paintings.
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Here (image 11) she created a border of triangles to frame her painting. You can draw a border too if you like when you create your own artwork. What can you tell me about the leaves in this painting? Do they look like they're falling or floating in mid-air? What do you think?
SHOW IMAGE #12
In this mushroom painting, you can see that Kusama did not use realistic colors. Her work does not look like real life. She uses bright, unrealistic colors to make ordinary, everyday objects seem new.
SHOW IMAGE #13
In the sunflower painting, the dots are placed in circles around the center of the flower. Here, she creates a circular pattern with dots. If you look closely, the pattern in the background looks a little bit like leaves. The background color is duller so it looks further away. Is there anything else you notice about this painting? {The flower petals have no pattern at all; the painting is "balanced" with one flower in the top half and one flower in the bottom half.}
ART REPS OF YOUNGER GRADES MAY NEED TO DEFINE BACKGROUND TO STUDENTS (E.G. THE BACKGROUND IS AN AREA THAT APPEARS FARTHEST AWAY FROM YOU. IT'S WHERE THE OBJECT, THE FLOWER IS PLACED).
INTRODUCE THE PROJECT We are going to create a COLLAGE in the style of Yayoi Kusama. Collage is a French word that means "to glue" and today we are going to cut out a shape (pumpkin, leaf, or flower), glue it onto paper, and paint lots of dots in a new way that you probably haven't done before! Many famous artists use something other than a paint brush to paint. Some use sponges or cloth, some pour paint right onto the canvas, splatter paint with string, or use their fingers, hands, or even feet! So today, we are also going to use something different (but not our feet); we're going to paint dots by using the eraser on a pencil.
We want to create BALANCE in our collages, just like Kusama did. Balance means that not all the dots are on one side or in one area. Balance also means that the patterns in the background are NOT stacked up on top of each other. They should be placed all around the paper.
We want to create BALANCE in our collages, just like Kusama did. Balance means that not all the dots are on one side or in one area. Balance also means that the patterns in the background are NOT stacked up on top of each other. They should be placed all around the paper.
CREATE ART
BRAINSTORM Ask the kids to look at their handouts. They'll see pumpkins, leaves, and flowers. The kids should take a few minutes to think about what shape they want to cut out. Remind the kids that the shape does not have to be perfect. Kusama's pumpkins were a little lopsided and her flowers didn't look like real flowers. Older Grades: If a student wants to create something different — like a fish, banana, apple, etc. — that's fine too.
BEGIN CUTTING The kids should choose a color for their shape (pumpkin, leaf, flower). Remind the kids that Kusama did not use realistic colors and they don't have to either. A pumpkin does not have to be orange. Next, they should cut out their shape directly into the paper without drawing it first. They'll decorate this shape with dots so make sure they cut BIG. To show the BIG scale that we want, you can display artwork examples from the Art Closet. You can also demonstrate by cutting out a BIG shape in front of the class. {If children are struggling, use pre-cut templates from the Art Closet}
PICK A BACKGROUND COLOR that complements the color of your shape. GLUE the cut shape (pumpkin, leaf, flower, etc.) to the background paper using the glue stick.
USING THE SHARPIE, ask the kids to draw a few lines on their shapes: ridges in the pumpkin if they chose a pumpkin, veins on the leaf, circle for the center of the flower, etc.
PAINT DOTS Using pencils as paint brushes (pencils from the Art Closet, not their own supplies), ask the kids to dip the eraser into the black or white paint and press down firmly on the their paper to create a dot. Repeat over and over until the shape is covered in dots. The children can create patterns of circles or have the dots all flow in one direction. Remind them that Kusama used patterns of dots to add movement, depth, and interest to her artwork, and they should too! The kids can look to the handout for inspiration or you can show them images of Kusama's work again.
STICKERS Use the fuzzy stickers to add texture or to fill in any empty spaces in their dot design.
BACKGROUND Each child should have 3 leftover colors of paper. Using this extra colored paper, ask the kids to cut out SMALL GEOMETRIC SHAPES OF THEIR OWN DESIGN and glue them onto the background paper. The students can cut small triangles, squares, random geometric shapes, circles, ovals and glue them in patterns. They can fit the shapes together like a puzzle to cover the entire background. Alternately, the kids can just glue a few pieces down and add more detail with Sharpie or additional painted dots.
USE SHARPIES to add more detail at the end. DRAW PATTERNS like Yayoi Kusama: zig zags, diamonds, triangles, swirls, etc. Look at the handout for ideas. The kids can create lines that "react" to the paper shapes that they've already glued down: for instance, the kids can draw lines and patterns around the triangles, or draw lines that connect one triangle to the next, and so on. Also, if a student does not want to use a Sharpie at all, that's fine. This is free-form and open-ended project; there are no mistakes! Have fun! :)
Please leave artwork with teachers. The teachers can display the artwork or let the children take their creations home.
Music Notes: Many kids enjoy listening to music in the background. The easiest way to do this it to play music from your smart phone on a bluetooth speaker that you bring from home. Yo-Yo Ma would be a great pick for this project, particularly Yo-Yo Ma, Cello; Japanese Melodies.
Example from 1st grader
