
TK-360: 5 is for MUSHROOMS 1995 by Yayoi Kusama
Season 3 Episode 331 | 14m 12sVideo has Closed Captions
Join Mrs. Readwright at Camp Discovery!
Transitional Kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Readwright, welcomes students back to Camp Discovery, a fun learning space packed with reading adventures & fun games!
Reading Explorers is a local public television program presented by Valley PBS

TK-360: 5 is for MUSHROOMS 1995 by Yayoi Kusama
Season 3 Episode 331 | 14m 12sVideo has Closed Captions
Transitional Kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Readwright, welcomes students back to Camp Discovery, a fun learning space packed with reading adventures & fun games!
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship(upbeat guitar music) ♪ Good morning to a brand new day ♪ ♪ Time to learn and games to play ♪ ♪ Learning things is so much fun ♪ ♪ Learning is good for everyone ♪ (upbeat, happy music) - Hello, early learners, and welcome back to the art room.
We want to start off our day with a hello song.
♪ Hello, nice to see you everyone ♪ ♪ Hello, nice to see you everyone ♪ ♪ Hello to you, hello to you, hello to you, hello to me ♪ ♪ Hello, nice to see you everyone ♪ Alrighty, we're doing the one, two, three's of art.
And today we're on number five and we're bringing back an artist that we spent a lot of time looking at around the end of October.
Maybe you remember this.
(Yayoi, Yayoi Kusama, the princess of polka dots.)
Remember her?
She put polka dots all over things and she also put what she called "an infinity web" in the background of her art, so it would make it look as if it had a really intricate background.
And we did that by coloring in our shapes and it took a very, very, very long time.
But I figured out a way to do an infinity web using old bubble wrap.
Now, I get a lot of things in the mail, art things that have to be wrapped in bubble wrap.
Do you know bubble wrap?
Let me show you a piece.
You might've seen this.
A lot of people like it because they like to pop each of the little air bubbles.
But what we're going to do is put paint on it, and then print it on top of our artwork to start out.
And then we're going to cut and paste five mushrooms.
So, let's do our song about the letters and numbers of art.
Ready?
♪ One, two, three, four, five of art ♪ ♪ That's the way that we will start ♪ ♪ One is for zebra ♪ ♪ Two is for Pez ♪ ♪ Three is for pears ♪ ♪ That's what Cezanne says!
♪ ♪ Four is for hearts painted by Jim Dine ♪ ♪ That is art and the number line ♪ Let's take a look at our artist and see what she is wearing and what she looks like.
Here she is, this is Yayoi.
Do you remember her?
She's the Japanese artist and she's currently living and she's still doing her art and she always wears polka dots, and she does her art with polka dots, and she does the infinity web.
Let's read the poem that I wrote about the five mushrooms.
"Five is for mushrooms.
We know about pumpkins that were covered in dots.
Kusama drew mushrooms, and the polka dots?
There were lots!"
So take a look.
Here is the infinity web all in the background.
And then she created five mushrooms.
Let's count them.
One, two, three, four, five.
And each of the mushrooms is different from the next one.
But they all have little domes.
They have the underlying web and the stem.
So what we're going to do is paint the background, if you have paint.
If not, you can do your infinity web however you would like to.
And if you have bubble wrap, I think you'll like it.
I wanted to show you this tool.
This tool is called a brayer.
And when you want things to go on smoothly, you use a brayer.
So let me see.
Oh, mine is really stuck.
I think I must have gotten paint in it.
All right, boys and girls, I'm gonna pick up my table and begin the project.
Let me put these things all to the side.
You can see, maybe, that I brought my big box of scrap paper.
I like to keep all the little scraps so that I don't waste any of it.
And I can use a lot of it for what I'm doing today.
So I'm putting the table up here.
I brought out a piece of newspaper because there's going to be paint and I don't want to get it on anything.
I have two pieces of paper.
I brought the pink one because I'd like to do that background.
And I brought white just in case I changed my mind.
We'll see if it looks good with the paint on this bubble wrap on here.
I'm not going to roll the paint on this.
This is I'm going to press down with and I could just use my hands and perhaps that's what I will do.
I put a tiny bit of magenta paint in the bottom of my pie pan.
I made my bubble wrap the same size as the paper I'm going to use.
Well, let me move these books.
You know, I try to remind you that if you send your address to us at this studio, we can send you one of these really fun activity books.
I'm gonna move them over so I don't keep putting my elbow on them.
All right, boys and girls, the reason I use the paper the same size because I want my entire background to be covered.
So I'm gonna move this over a little bit and get my big brush that I used when I was gluing.
And I need to dry it off a bit.
Now watch, let me move this so it doesn't get paint on it while I paint the bubble wrap.
Now I told you, if you don't have bubble wrap and you don't have paint, all you need to do is just put a bunch of polka dots on your paper, so don't worry if you don't have the materials.
And if I get too much on the top, it will not make my bubbles even, which is not a problem for me.
I have to do this quickly so the paint doesn't dry.
Maybe I better put some water with it because if the paint dries, before I press on it and print, it will not make the dots.
And I really want the infinity web to be dottie.
And we've talked about how to do prints.
When we did a Kusama one before, we used an old cork.
We've used the end of our pencil eraser and dipped it in the paint and put it on the paper, dip it in the paint and put it on the paper.
And that's one way to do printmaking.
So I don't ever want you to worry if you don't have materials that I'm using, because you can think of ways and you don't even have to wait for me to tell you, "Well you could do this, or you could do that."
You think, "Hey, I know how I could do that.
I could just make polka dots with my fingertip.
I can put my fingers in the paint and just push it on my paper."
So let's see if I haven't made it all dried out yet.
Let me move this paint over.
I have a piece of paper towel- Whoa, pencils.
I have a piece of paper towel here.
I don't want to put my fingerprints on it.
So I'm gonna wipe.
Always keep a little piece of paper towel near you so that if this happens to you, you can just get it off of your fingers.
'Cause, oh, that magenta really stains.
Okay, putting my pink paper here, flipping this over and setting it on my paper, and then I can just rub it like this, not too hard, because if any of the paint went between my dots, it would not print and it may not be perfect, but what do I feel about that?
Ooh!
Look at that!
That is so good.
Now look what I'm going to do.
I'm going to fold paint side to paint side, put it like this and set it on another piece of newspaper over here so I don't get any of my furniture a mess.
Now look, I didn't print right here accidentally, but what I can do is cut that off later.
Let's set that up.
I'm gonna pick up some of my paper scraps, put them up here, get my scissors, and my glue stick.
Now, some of you like to have your pieces drawn for you first because you think that you can't do something just right.
But I'm going to show you how I'm going to do it.
And I'm gonna think, "Maybe I'll make this mushroom kind of big-ish right here."
So I know a mushroom is kind of a dome or a mountain shape.
It's a curved line.
I can see if I like that size.
I think it's little too big.
So I'm gonna cut it down a little bit and put it, how's that look?
Good, and I think for that part, I would like maybe a different color.
What color?
Maybe yellow.
So underneath part is kind of webbed, so what I'm going to do is use my pencil to mark where this goes, so look how I've done this.
Let me move some of these out of the way so if you can't see, that won't be helpful.
So I'm going to put this here and mark how far down and I'm going to put it kind of an oval-y shape.
That's just all I needed, was to see how long it would be.
And I'm just going to cut this.
Now you can make your mushrooms whatever shape you like.
Look how long of this oval.
It kind of looks like a hot dog!
But it'll look good when I glue it on here.
You can see that where I painted is drying.
I might not add my mushrooms 'till after it dries a little more.
See how I did this mushroom?
I did that mountain shape and then put that hot dog on there.
I can use my colored pencils or I can use anything I'd like to make this go out.
It has like, little lines, looks like little gills that makes this look this way.
Now what makes this look like Yayoi's work is to put polka dots.
So I think what I'm going to do is make some, oh, some turquoise polka dots.
So I'm just cutting this, just a scrap, and I'm folding it and folding it so I can get a bunch of polka dots at once.
Well, actually, I think it's only gonna make three.
There we go.
And I'll put them not only on this mushroom, but when I put it on the stem, I will put it there.
But I have an extra thing I want to do, too.
I want to put white around it or black around it to make it even more colorful.
And I thought about doing it in a way that might make it look like how we do the eyeballs, where you put the color on a piece of white and then trim around it.
But we'll see, we'll see.
Because I just keep thinking as I do my art, "What do I want to do now?
Oh, what will I do now?"
I don't think it out ahead of time very often.
'Cause I like to just think, "Well, what is my mind thinking now?
What is it think it's gonna do next?"
These are so small, they keep sticking to my fingers.
So I think I'm just gonna glue onto the mushroom and then add it to that.
Get off of me, get on that paper.
Is it?
Yep, so I'm gonna set this up here and I'll show you what I meant.
With my pastels, I wanna go around the outside so they stand out even more.
Do you see I'm going around them with a color?
You know, I'm only gonna just get started, boys and girls.
But I'll put this one mushroom on.
I really like to wait 'till all the things are ready to glue on so I can arrange and rearrange, but I want you to see what this is going to look like.
And I can do its stem.
I want a nice stem on that mushroom and I'll put polka dots on it.
But I just want you to see how yours might look if that's how you are going to do yours.
And how many are we going to put on here?
Five, if you'd like.
There, I think that looks pretty good.
I'm going to make myself a purple-y blue one, I think, and I'll maybe make it a little smaller in the width, but really tall.
Oh, that'll make a good one.
Yep, I like the looks of this.
Getting paint on everything, boys and girls.
Well, you know, it's Friday.
So that means that it's going to be the weekend, so I won't tell you what to bring next time because next time will be after we are gone away from one another for a little bit.
But let's sing "Goodbye, Nice to See You Everyone" so that you can see that I'm going to greet you and say goodbye to you the same way.
♪ Goodbye, see you next time everyone ♪ ♪ Goodbye, see you next time everyone ♪ ♪ Goodbye, to you ♪ ♪ Goodbye, to you ♪ Bye, boys and girls, thanks for coming.
(upbeat guitar music) ♪ Good morning to a brand new day ♪ ♪ Time to learn and games to play ♪ ♪ Learning things is so much fun ♪ ♪ Learning is good for everyone ♪
Reading Explorers is a local public television program presented by Valley PBS