Yayoi Kusama Pumpkins

Yayoi Kusama (born 22 March 1929) is a Japanese contemporary artist who works primarily in sculpture and installation, and is also active in painting, performance, video art, fashion, poetry, fiction, and other arts. She has been acknowledged as one of the most important living artists to come out of Japan, the world's top-selling female artist, and the world's most successful living artist. Her work influenced that of her contemporaries, including Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg.

Kusama has been open about her mental health and has resided since the 1970s in a mental health facility which she leaves daily to walk to her nearby studio to work. 

Grade 4-6 students watched a video about Kasuma's life. Then they looked at photos of her work, including her pumpkins and mushrooms. 

Yayoi Kusama often features kabocha, or pumpkin, in her work. Since 1946 Kusama’s pumpkins have taken many forms, colours and shapes, but they are always covered in the artist’s signature polka dot pattern.

Although she makes lots of different types of art – paintings, sculptures, performances and installations – she has become known for the one thing they have in common, DOTS! Yayoi Kusama tells the story of how when she was a little girl she had a hallucination that freaked her out. 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 or as she calls it ‘self-obliterating’ – into this field of endless dots. This weird experience influenced most of her later work. By adding all-over marks and dots to her paintings, drawings, objects and clothes she feels as if she is making them (and herself) melt into, and become part of, the bigger universe. 

Students started off by drawing a 3D pumpkin on regular white paper.

Then they outlined it in sharpie and added dots of different sizes in vertical lines down the pumpkin.

Then we did the tin foil bingo dauber transfer technique which I saw on an Instagram reel.

Cut tin foil the same size as the paper. Students use bingo daubers to create a pattern on the tin foil.

Then spray the tin foil with water and place the pumpkin drawing face down. Rub and peel off to reveal the colorful transfer!

Finished Grade 4-6 artworks!