Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese artist who is sometimes called ‘the princess of polka dots'. Although she makes lots of different types of art – paintings, sculptures, performances and installations – they have one thing 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. She said: ‘Our earth is only one polka dot among a million stars in the cosmos. Polka dots are a way to infinity. When we obliterate nature and our bodies with polka dots, we become part of the unity of our environment’. She was also one of the first artists to experiment with performance and action art. As well as being an art pioneer, Yayoi Kusama put her creativity into other things including music, design, writing and fashion.
This project introduced the students in Renaissance Academy to pattern as element of art and different methods of making patterns and designs. Pattern in art is made by repeating or echoing the visual elements of an artwork. The Visual Element of Pattern is constructed by repeating or echoing the elements of an artwork to communicate a sense of balance, harmony, contrast, rhythm or movement. The element subjected to repetition is called a motif. As Yayoi Kusama uses the dot in a repeating sequence, the students recreated one of her flower sculptures using the same element as the repeating motif to create polka dot patterns that varied in size and color. The students experimented with stamps, bubble wrap and stencils to create patterned collage paper from which their peculiar looking flowers were then created.
