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| 3rd Grade Art Lesson: Yayoi Kusama and Space by A Crafty Arab |
Happy International Women's Day!
To celebrate international women, I taught my students an art lesson on Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, who was a painter, sculptor, writer, composer, created large scale environmental installation pieces and also worked in collage and fabrics.
I recently included her in a post I wrote about
7 Women Artists Who Changed History.
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| 3rd Grade Art Lesson: Yayoi Kusama and Space by A Crafty Arab |
I volunteer teach art every two weeks in my daughter's school and we are spending the year going through the seven elements of art. Today I taught them about space, using Yayoi Kusama as our inspiration.
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| 3rd Grade Art Lesson: Yayoi Kusama and Space by A Crafty Arab |
Before we started on our project, I told them a little about Yayoi Kusama and her use of
pointillism in her quest to cover up all the space around her.
Yayoi Kusama was born in Japan in 1929 to a very conservative family. At ten years old, her mother took away her brushes and paints and told her girls had to train to be housewives.
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| 3rd Grade Art Lesson: Yayoi Kusama and Space by A Crafty Arab |
Yayoi Kusama's family finally let her go to traditional art school, but she soon got bored with the technique and secretly drew animals like this one below. I drew attention to how she covered every single area of this sketch so the kids would see her full use of space.
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| 3rd Grade Art Lesson: Yayoi Kusama and Space by A Crafty Arab |
Kusama even drew her mother in a traditional Japanese kimono dress in the below sketch. I asked the kids if they thought that maybe the mom had chickenpox? But then I showed them how the dots also showed up on the kimono, the hair and the landscape behind her.
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| 3rd Grade Art Lesson: Yayoi Kusama and Space by A Crafty Arab |
Dots, dots. dots? Whey dots? To Kusama, dots represented the universe, the sun, the moon, people, atoms in people, everything and anything was a dot. And she has never been able to stop drawing them. She was once asked in an
interview why she drew so many dots, to which she replied, "
You must ask my hands."
She left Japan as a young adult and came to live in Seattle for a year (the kids got excited over that) before heading to New York City. The moment she got there, she went to the top of the Empire State Building and said
"Seeing this big city, I promised myself that one day I would conquer New York and make my name in the world with my passion for the arts and mountains of creative energy stored inside myself."
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| 3rd Grade Art Lesson: Yayoi Kusama and Space by A Crafty Arab |
Kusama went on to show in major galleries, museums, the Brooklyn Bridge, Central Park, anywhere and everywhere she could. Her repetitive use of the dots really made a huge splash in the art world.
She always made sure to have herself photographed at each event, so that the photos would also then become a part of her art.
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| 3rd Grade Art Lesson: Yayoi Kusama and Space by A Crafty Arab |
She hired actors to do large scale environmental installations and I talked to the kids about how these were different then the performance art pieces that she would also do in enclosed spaces. We looked at a photo of her environmental installations piece.
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| 3rd Grade Art Lesson: Yayoi Kusama and Space by A Crafty Arab |
She did group gallery shows with other famous New York artists during this
Pop Art era, including Claes Oldenburg and Andy Warhol.
I told the kids they can head down to the
Seattle Art Museum Olympic Sculpture Park and see for themselves Kusama's large scale influence in Claes Oldenburg's
Typewriter Eraser, Scale X, 1999. The Sculpture Park is free to anyone during the day.
(FYI, the piece behind the Oldenburg is an Alexander Calder. Be sure to check out his
art lesson.)
I also showed the kids
Double Elvis, 1963/1976 by Andy Warhol that is hanging in the Seattle Art Museum. When Warhol first painted this, it only had one Elvis on it. It was only later that he added the second Elvis. Could it be because of Kusama's repetitive influence? Some in the art world would say yes. If the kid wanted to decide for themselves, they can go see Elvis the first Thursday of every month, when SAM if free to the public.
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| 3rd Grade Art Lesson: Yayoi Kusama and Space by A Crafty Arab |
Kusama has since returned to Japan, due to health reasons. She works out of her studio even now (the kids and I did the math together, she is 87 years old), five days a week, 9 to 5, (also more fun math to do). Her artwork can be seen all over the world and in hundreds of exhibits.
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| 3rd Grade Art Lesson: Yayoi Kusama and Space by A Crafty Arab |
She also creates accessories for Louis Vuitton, a fashion designer. There is a store in Seattle that has her line of purses, sunglasses, necklaces, bracelets, etc that the kids can go check out.
A few years back when SAM had a
showing of Kusama, the Louis Vuitton store fronts turned into her environmental installations, a continuation of the exhibit a few blocks away from SAM. I loved walking by it weekly when I got off my bus at 5th and Seneca on my way to work and would always stop and get lost in the dots for a few moments.
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| 3rd Grade Art Lesson: Yayoi Kusama and Space by A Crafty Arab |
When Kusama paints, she fills up the entire space of each artwork by creating interesting patterns and colors with different sizes of dots. I showed a few photos of her pumpkins to the kids.
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| 3rd Grade Art Lesson: Yayoi Kusama and Space by A Crafty Arab |
We then got started on our own. Together with pencils we created a basic pumpkin shape out of curved
lines that covered our entire piece of paper from top to bottom, leaving a little space for a stem. After the pumpkin was drawn, the kids were given acrylic paint and qtips to cover the inside of the pumpkin with
two contrast colors. They could use one side of the qtip for one color and the other for their second color.
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| 3rd Grade Art Lesson: Yayoi Kusama and Space by A Crafty Arab |
Some kids really got into it and used both hands to paint every space inside their pumpkin.
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| 3rd Grade Art Lesson: Yayoi Kusama and Space by A Crafty Arab |
While others took their time making patterns to cover up their space.
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| 3rd Grade Art Lesson: Yayoi Kusama and Space by A Crafty Arab |
We had some great looking masterpieces by the end of our hour.
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| 3rd Grade Art Lesson: Yayoi Kusama and Space by A Crafty Arab |
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| 3rd Grade Art Lesson: Yayoi Kusama and Space by A Crafty Arab |
Some of the kids finished the inside of their contrast color pumpkins earlier then others. They were allowed to qtip the outside any color they wished, filling it up way they liked. A few even had time to include more pumpkins.
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| 3rd Grade Art Lesson: Yayoi Kusama and Space by A Crafty Arab |
The kids loved learning about space and Yayoi Kasama. As always, I'm so impressed with how much they love to learn.
To see more more of our lessons from this year, visit
3rd Grade Art Lesson: Embellished Faces Inspired by Marita Dingus
To see more lessons plans for different grades, visit
