Greensboro Birds

Birds on the Wires from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.

If you haven’t seen this already, enjoy. If you have seen it already, enjoy it again. It’s worth another look. Also, are these cowbirds, or just some Brazilian cowbird knockoff?

Check out today’s Shirt.Woot: “Larkitecture.” Get it? It’s a bird, building a nest, using blueprints. Try not to get bogged down in the fact that the bird isn’t super larky. Just enjoy how cute and clever it is. If you’re a lady, I highly recommend either ording a size up or even going for a man’s size. They run small. Like larks.

What with these big ol’ budget cuts coming down on North Carolina public schools, not to mention shrinking endowments in our local private schools, art classes are one of the first casualties of this rotten recession. So what’s a parent of a creative kid to do? Register your kids in the Greensboro Art Alliance’s after-school art classes!

Josh will be teaching two kids’ art classes this fall, and although I might be biased, I’ve seen him in the classroom (he filled in for my frequently absent teacher’s aide when I was a preschool teacher) and I can vouch that he is a fantastic teacher whom kids both love and respect. What makes Josh a great teacher?

• Process over product. Josh lets kids explore the materials, lending suggestions and a broad structure, but mostly encouraging his students to find their own artistic vision.
• Inspiration over agenda. While Josh does create lesson plans, he will happily scrap it if his students show a sudden deep interest in something else. So the kids aren’t into clay today now that they’ve seen watercolor? Fine, let’s paint! Want to make masks of Dali instead of paint? Cool! Let’s make mustaches!
• Patient, caring—and funny. Josh has a talent for following the kids’ lead while maintaining the peace in a casual, usually funny way. He also knows that every child learns in different ways, and he adapts every project to the individual student. A word of warning: Josh has a way of bringing out the punster in kids. One of his classes this summer was covering Aesop’s Fables, which inspired a student to make a mini-book titled The Tourist and Some Hair, illustrated accordingly.
• Creative and practical! Got a leaky sink? Not only is Josh an art teacher, he’s also in the home stretch of earning his plumbing certificate at GTCC. He’s got a leg up on Duchamp: Josh can either make your toilet a work of art—or just unclog it!

You’re totally ready to sign up now, aren’t you? Here are the details:

Artist Trading Cards

Instructor: Josh Sutcliffe

ages 10-13

Session 1: August 31-October 5

Session 2: October 26-November 30

Mondays, 4:30-6:00

Portraits

Instructor: Josh Sutcliffe

Session 1: ages 8-10,

September 2-October 7

Session 2: ages 6-8,

October 28-December 2

Wednesdays, 4:00-5:30

Check out the Art Alliance website for more information. There are plenty of fun classes for adults, too. Why let the kids have all the fun? Sign up today—space is limited!

Last Saturday, July 11, in a time of 4 hours 20 minutes, Josh ran 26.2 miles from Boone, NC, to Grandfather Mountain in the Grandfather Mountain Marathon, which is known as one of America’s toughest marathons. Not only did he finish in the top 50%, he ran the entire route in $6 aqua socks from Walmart—I kid you not! (He wanted to run san shoes entirely, but I wouldn’t let him.) Here’s the proof:

But finishing in fine form and in cheap shoes wasn’t enough for this overachiever:

After crossing the finish line, Josh jumped into a nearby kilt and pinned a few guys in a wrestling tournament taking place in the infield. This he could do barefoot, which pleased him to no end.

Once the wrestling was out of the way, Josh put his aqua socks back on with a spare pair of argyle socks and warmed up for the dance competition. I won’t say he won, per se, but he jumped surprisingly high after all that running and wrestling.

Congratulations, Josh! You kicked the ass of the mountain!

Josh and I saw a small flock of cedar waxwings this morning at Farris Park. Rockingham County is on the margin of year-round waxwings, but this is the first I’ve seen them in July. No photos, but worth mentioning nonetheless.