Yayoi Kusama – Our Monthly Artist

Dear Parents,
During November, our monthly artist was Yayoi Kusama. She was born in 1929, so by today, she is 90 years old. Regardless of her age, she is still an active Japanese contemporary artist who works primarily in sculpture and installation. She is also active in painting, performance, film, fashion, poetry, fiction, and other arts… Kusama was inspired, however, by American Abstract Impressionism.

To introduce Kusama to our children, first, we showed them books with her work. Then pasted colored dot on the walls which remained exhibited throughout the month. We read the book in the library called Yayoi Kusama “From Here to Infinity”. We also saw a very interesting video about the criticism of children towards pop art, specifically from an exhibition by Yayoi Kusama called: “The dotty”.

Finally, we turned our entire art classroom into a Kusama setting with red dots. Each student helped by placing their own dots.

To create a personalized portrait in Kusama style, students decorated their own photos using opaline paper, paint (in a wide range of colors to choose from) and bottle corks.

We could not miss one of the most famous pieces from the artist, so in the third session, we made the “Dotted Pumpkin”. We observed images of some Kusama designs and then each student painted their own pumpkin-inspired on what they saw. Children use Q-tips to place dots contrasting the background and decoration color.

To see more pictures of our Kusama Art Class check out our Flickr account.

Children expressed that they were surprised to learn that Kusama, at her age, keeps painting as she does and her art is full of color and surprisingly modern.

“I think I will be able to, in the end, rise above the clouds and climb the stairs to Heaven, and I will look down on my beautiful life.” Yayoi Kusama

Regards,
Discovery Preschool