Yayoi Kusama was born on March 22, 1929 in Matsumoto Japan. Her family was upper middle class and very conservative and strict. Yayoi has often recounted that she did not have a happy childhood or live in a happy home. At age 13, she was sent to live and work in a military factory to sew parachutes for the Japanese army. From age 10, she suffered from acute anxiety attacks. She remembers hallucinating polka-dots that would swallow up everything, including herself. This is why polka-dots have such a strong presence in her work. She has lived side by with her mental illness, knowing it is an important part of who she is as well as her art. This may be why she so often creates a space for viewers to be swallowed up in her art and see it more from her perspective.

Kusama works in many media. She paints, sculpts, and creates installations combining different media. She has also made films, done live performance art pieces and even designs clothing. Often she creates an installation for her sculptures and paintings to be viewed within a mirrored room that gives the art an infinite and encompassing quality. Most of her work has symbolic meaning. For example, the polka-dots she uses so frequently reference her anxiety and sense of self. Pumpkins mimic the human form, she says. She uses them also as an alter-ego self portrait. She described her “Infinity Nets” paintings as “a curtain between me and other people.”

Over the years, Yayoi has been associated with several art movements, but her work can’t easily be defined by any one movement; which is part of her genius and appeal. She has won several important awards, including the Praemium Imperiale award from the Japanese Imperial family. She is the only female Japanese artist to have been given this award and is widely thought to be one of the most important artists to come from Japan.

Today we will use Yayoi Husama’s sense for bold patterns and color to create our own mixed media work. Tell students to start thinking about what they want to create while you show them the materials we have to work with. Once they have their idea in place, they can follow these steps:

1. Choose a color of card stock and lightly sketch out your design. Decide where you want to use fabric scraps and up to 4 of the embellishments in the box. (I often remind the students that we have lots of friends to share with. There are more than 500 kids that will do this project!)

2. Add color with the pastels next, get your picture how you want it and then you will be ready to glue down the fabric, etc. I think it’s helpful to color over the lines of where you want the fabric, just in case you cut it a little bit smaller or differently than you were planning.

3. Lay the fabric down on the are where you want it and draw the shape you want it cut into the fabric. Then cut it out and glue it on.

4. Touch up the color with the pastels if needed. Finally glue down the buttons/flowers, etc.