TARGET FREE FAMILY SATURDAY, 'ARTFULLY YOURS', SET FOR DECEMBER 13

The Japanese American National Museum hosts the latest Target Free Family Saturday event on Saturday, December 13, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., with the theme of "Artfully Yours", featuring hands-on arts and crafts for family members inspired by the current exhibition on display at the National Museum, 20 Years Ago Today: Supporting Visual Artists in L.A., organized by the California Community Foundation and co-sponsored by the Getty Foundation.

The Target Free Family Saturday series occurs monthly at the National Museum in Little Tokyo and provides opportunities for families to work together on fun activities and to create unique items. The activities include a festive snowflake window decoration to hang for the holiday season and the chance to build one’s own sculpture.

Highlighting the day’s activities will be Girligami by Cindy Ng, set for both 12 noon and 2 p.m. Ng will provide a fresh and fun look at the traditional Japanese cultural art of origami (paperfolding), showing participants how to create nontraditional paper objects, including little shoes, purses, clothing, animals, valentine hearts and more. Ng provides a step-by-step set of directions plus preprinted origami paper that can be torn and folded. Information will be available on how these creations can be turned into earrings and necklaces or added to cards.

At 1 and 3 p.m., professional artist Neal Yamamoto will provide a cartoon workshop. Yamamoto, who does a cartoon strip that appears in the Rafu Shimpo and is featured on the National Museum’s Web site, Discover Nikkei, has created a body of work that has been published in over 100 books as well as comics, magazines and educational publications nationwide. He also teaches classes on cartooning and comic book illustrations for the UCLA Extension, Pasadena City College, California State University, Los Angeles and Santa Monica City College.

Besides 20 Years Ago Today, visitors will be able to view the Dreams to Dreams Custom Vinyl Show, featuring the interpretations by over 40 artists of the traditional Japanese daruma doll. Presented by the National Museum and Chocolate Soop, the show begins with the traditional daruma, a doll, with no arms, legs and eyes, that is modeled after the founder of Zen Buddhism who was spend all his time meditating. Each of the artists then painted, sculpted and remade the doll in whatever way they wanted. Yamamoto has his own creation in this display. This show runs through Sunday, January 4, 2009, closing on the National Museum’s Oshogatsu (New Year’s) program.

"Artfully Yours" is graciously sponsored by Target with the goal of providing fun activities for families as well as providing unique ways for them to learn, play and grow together. For more information, call the Japanese American National Museum at (213) 625-0414.