One of the ways in which we do this is to produce purposeful whole school art work every year which is displayed in the main areas of the school.   We have a whole school art week where each child participates by producing artwork either inspired by an artist or based on a story or theme. All of the art is collated to create displays in the hall, library and main corridor.  We feel that by doing whole school art projects, the children gain a sense of being part of a school community – they are proud to show each other which display they contributed to and enjoy sharing the displays with their families.

This year we have created pieces of work which are both linked to an artist and projects studied over the academic year.   The children enjoyed finding out about our local area and found out interesting facts about Norwich and its rich history of buildings and their uses, including The Forum, Norwich Castle, The Cathedral, City Hall and Norwich Market. 

We enjoyed learning about the Artist James Rizzi and used his work as a stimulus for our whole school art.

 James Rizzi was an American artist and was born in New York in October 1950.

Rizzi’s art was inspired by his home city, New York. In 1996, James created ‘The New York Paintings’, which were of New York skyscrapers. They were created in a cartoon style using bright colours.  Here are some of his pieces of work.

                                                  

Rizzi painted some of the buildings with faces on them. This made it seem like they were cartoon characters.

 James Rizzi designed his own house in Germany and used lots of bright colours and faces.

                 

 

We used his ‘Day or Night – My City is Bright’  piece of work as inspiration for the long corridor display and the children really enjoyed creating their own buildings, thinking carefully about bright colours, faces, expression and hair styles. 

Our ‘ Day and Night’ piece of art

 

   

 We also designed our own piece of work in the style of James Rizzi and included some of Norwich’s buildings.  Can you name the buildings in our piece of art?

Our  ‘Norwich – Our city is Bright!’  piece of art

        

Our library display was inspired by his piece of work ‘See you on the Beautiful Sea’.

     

The children used a colour wash to create the sea and used their own ideas to create birds and various creatures from the sea.

Our- ‘ See you at the Norfolk coast’ piece of art

     

         

The children also created individual pieces of art using iPads and by cutting out paper to make a collage. 

The children having been looking at the displays and have enjoyed looking for their piece of art and discussing what they have learned so far.