Kusama Collages

While Kusama is known for her installations, she also creates amazing paintings using organic shapes and intricate designs. 5th grade viewed many of these as the inspiration for these collages.

Original paintings by Kusama

We used this as a chance to review complementary colors. Students chose 2 papers and cut organic shapes from one to collage onto the other.

Then we used Sharpie markers to add designs like we found in Kusama's paintings. Gorgeous results!

Check out these awesome artworks!

3D Kusama Rooms

4th grade did an amazing job with these rooms! Im often worried about open-ended projects like this, but they nailed it! We started by looking at images and videos of Kusama's Infinity Rooms and Obliteration Room. We sketched our ideas first, then constructed a room.

Students were given colored dot stickers, mirror boards, and Crayola Model Magic clay for their 3D items such as pumpkins and tentacles. 

Starry Night meets Kusama!

Love how original each room is, while staying true to Kusama's style!

Yayoi Kusama Classroom Decorations!

In October, we studied modern Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama (or Kusama Yayoi, if you're following Japanese grammar). This was my favorite artist to decorate for so far, so check it out!

I got a Star Shower projector from WalMart for about $15. Huge impact and gives us the sense of being in one of Kusama's Infinity rooms!

Infinity Room by Yayoi Kusama

To make sure we could see the lights, I covered the windows with dotted black paper.

A few examples of the pumpkins 3rd grade made, and some spotted pumpkins from Target helped complete the effect. And some Obliteration Room dots on the mannequins. ^_^

Tissue Paper Collage

2nd grade practiced patterns in this crayon resist tissue paper collage. We use oil pastels and watercolors to create a background and "vase paper". Then we assembled our vase and added super simple tissue paper flowers. Always fun to make. ^_^

Clay Flower Collage

This is a lesson I learned at the 2016 Art Scouts from the amazing Laura Lohman of Painted Paper. Follow the link for more details of how these were created, she says it best. 1st grade rocked these and we all fell in love with Crayola Model Magic. ^_^

Van Gogh Sunflower Weaving

4th grade looked at Van Gogh's Sunflowers series. We were inspired to use warm colors and weaving techniques to create these gorgeous artworks! Since this is a repeat lesson, all details can be found in this link. 

One thing I did do differently was create a giant vase to hang them all together. Now if I can just get rid of that bus mural...

Yayoi Kusama Resources

As many of us are exploring modern artist Yayoi Kusama this month, I thought I would share some of the resources I have made. This link takes you to my Google Drive folder. You can find my PPT Presentations, worksheets, and coloring sheets for early finishers. Enjoy!

Marbled Paper Starry Night

3rd grade viewed "Starry Night" by Vincent van Gogh. Inspired by the dark, cool colors and his use of swirls, we created a piece of marbled paper to use in our Starry Night collage.

We started by dripping cool colored paints on a tray of shaving cream. Then we used a wooden stick to swirl the colors.

After the colors were swirled, we pressed our paper into the shaving cream. We used the wooden stick to scrap off the extra.

Once our paper was dry again, we used black paper to cut out a silhouette of a city or mountain scene.

Last, we added the stars and moon using q-tips and white and yellow paint. Gorgeous results!

Check out the video on my YouTube channel for a how-to on marbled paper!