【推荐1】Welcome to art-collecting.com. After the successful maintenance of the website, we want you to know that art-collecting.com will continue to aim to make information about art available to all as we have been doing for the past 24 years. Here are some art galleries.

Art of the World Gallery

The gallery provides a contemporary, complex and rich cultural experience for art enthusiasts and collectors from all around the world. Directly representing some of the most important living artists from Asia, Europe, and Latin America, Art of the World Gallery is one of the most famous galleries in the U.S., located in Houston’s finest hot spot for locals and tourists.

Halvorsen Fine Art Gallery

Established in Houston Historic Art District, at Sawyer Yards, Halvorsen Fine Art Gallery with 2,000 square feet features amazing paintings of landscapes and seascapes by impressionistic artists. In addition to hosting artist exhibitions, it provides art consultation services for collectors, designers and art enthusiasts.

Zatista Contemporary & Fine Art

With over 4,000 works from the most talented emerging and established artists, Zatista provides access to the types of works previously only accessible to seasoned collectors. Buying online with Zatista is easy with their free art consultation, certificates of authenticity (真实性), and a buyer guarantee that allows you to try art in your home with free returns.

John Palmer Fine Art

It’s located in the avenue in the Historic Heights. The combination of a saved 1930’s bungalow (平房) with museum-quality new construction is the perfect atmosphere to showcase the great works of artist John Ross Palmer. John Palmer Fine Art is open by appointment only. You can set an appointment by calling 7138616726. We look forward to showing you the beautiful world of John Palmer Fine Art!

【推荐3】Every month we look at a different artist. We think Haroshi is super cool—he makes sculptures(雕塑) from skateboards.

Haroshi is in his late 30s. He’s a skateboarder but he also makes things from wood. He began skateboarding when he was 15 years old and he loved it. He used to skate every day. Now, if you know anything about skateboarding, you’ll know that skateboards don’t last forever because they break. But Haroshi didn’t throw his out because he was fond of them. Over time he built up a big collection and at the same time he learnt about all the different types of skateboard. Surprisingly, not all skateboards are of the same shape and actually they are often built in different ways. By the time he was 25, he had an enormous collection of old skateboards.

He decided he had to do something with them so he started to cut them up. As he was doing that, he noticed some interesting patterns in the wood. He then cut more and stuck them on top of each other. The first thing he created from the wood was a piece of jewelry. He created something new from something old.

Nowadays, however, he is known for his extremely large 3D wooden sculptures. His ideas generally come from skateboarding culture, ranging from skateboarding cats to cool trainers, but also everyday topics such as hurting yourself, getting better, being crazy about something and of course, growing up. All skateboarders will understand these. Haroshi has made over 40 pieces and each piece takes a very long time. There is no doubt that he is very talented but he’s had no formal art training. He taught himself.

Haroshi held an exhibition in London last month and three of us from @teenattack went along. As we entered the first room, we saw a huge bird that covered one wall. It was absolutely enormous! There was also a sculpture called Ordinary life. It looked like a broken leg—a very common problem, of course. It’s incredible to think that these sculptures are all made from broken skateboards. But there’s something else that is really interesting about Haroshi’s work.

In the twelfth century a sculptor called Unkei placed a glass ball in each of his works to show the heart of the piece. Haroshi also places something inside his sculptures—a piece of broken skateboard. In this way, he gives his sculptures life. We think that is just awesome!

【推荐3】How many bicycles do you need in your life? For 67-year-old Chai Lin, the answer is 1,300 and counting.

Chai’s passion for bicycles dates back to the 1960s when he saw some people riding the two-wheeled vehicle in his home city of Lanzhou, capital of north-west China’s Gansu Province. However, in that era, a bicycle was still a luxury for ordinary Chinese. To get enough money sooner, Chai made use of his talent in calligraphy and painting—a skill he started to learn from six years old—by selling artworks on the street. Thanks to all the efforts and “crowd-funding” in his family, Chai got his first bike in 1980.

After becoming a businessman years later and earning enough to buy fancy motorbikes and cars, Chai’s passion for bikes, however, didn’t dwindle at all. He began to collect bikes of various brands and ages, especially antiques, from around the world through auctions and other ways.

With his collection growing, there was no space big enough to keep it. In 2009, with the support of the Gansu provincial government, he invested 200 million yuan for a museum just for his bikes.

After 10 years’efforts, the Gansu Sanmu Bicycle Museum, located in Chengguan District of Lanzhou, finally opened to the public in January 2019 free of charge.

The museum has been designated as an off-campus research centre for local primary and middle school students and is also popular with tourists. In the first half of this year alone, it received more than 900,000 tourists. Due to limited space,a large part of Chai’s collection is not yet exhibited and has to be stored in the warehouse, driving him to improve the museum.

“Bikes carry unique and precious memories of our generation. I hope to expand the scale of the displaying area of the museum and provide a comfortable ‘home’ for my bikes,” he said.

【推荐1】Why do you think people who live in some hot countries eat very spicy (辛辣的) food? Is it because the spices make the food taste better? Is it just because their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents liked hot food, or is there some connection between spices and healthy food?

Researchers from Cornell University think that it is because spice plants have some important chemicals. These chemicals can kill bacteria (细菌) which spoil food. “Most common spices can kill 75 to 100 percent of the bacteria in food,” explains one of the scientists. The bacteria grow more easily and spoil food more quickly at higher temperatures. For this reason, it is more difficult to keep food from spoiling in hot climates.

Do you like your food spicy? Your answer probably tells something about the country you come from．If you like spicy food, it is possible that hundreds of years ago, when there were no fridges, people in your country started using spices to keep the food from spoiling. The traditional spicy dishes helped those people to live longer, healthier lives. Today, in a time of fridges, the spices just make the food taste good.

【推荐2】A number of companies have used the wind, the sun and the ground heat to produce energy. Now, the Ocean Renewable Power Company, or ORPC, is using the force of flowing rivers and ocean currents. The company recently presented the new technology at an energy conference. Christopher Sauer, the CEO and co－creator of ORPC says the technology was designed for small, rural communities that do not have easy access to power sources.

The ORPC technology is an energy generator which can be put under water, called RivGen. It works in a series of steps. First, the generator is put in the middle of a steel cage. The cage goes on top of a wide boat with a flat bottom. Wheels— or, turbines (涡轮机) — are attached to each side of the generator. Once the boat is fixed to one place, it is flooded with water. The boat, cage, and generator all sink to the bottom of the river. There, the river current turns the wheels and creates as much as 50 kilowatts of power.

CEO Christopher Sauer says RivGen is not very tall, so it can work in water areas that are not very deep. Other companies are not able to work in shallow water, he adds. Sauer says the turbines are safe for the animals that live in the river. Meanwhile, the turbines’ shape permits the generator to harvest power from tidal currents in the ocean. The company’s ocean turbine, called TidGen, can create up to 600 kilowatts of electricity, enough to power a small settlement.

Right now, the amount of power TidGen can harvest changes as the strength of the tide goes up and down. But ORPC workers are trying to make the power output steady. In time, they want TidGen power to be part of the main energy grid (电网). Sauer estimates ORPC’ s current price is about 50 cents per kilowatt－hour. That price does not make the ORPC system competitive with natural gas. However, for small rural communities, diesel (柴油) energy can cost more than $ 1 per hour. In these situations, energy from flowing water could be more economical.

【推荐3】Travel is one of the most exciting experiences a human being can have. Imagine how Italian traveler Marco Polo must have felt when he found himself on Chinese soil, seeing a way of life quite different from anything he’d seen before.

And how great must it have been to listen to Zhang Qian when he returned to China from his journey through Central Asia and West Asia? His brain must have been packed with everything he’d seen and heard, leading to the founding of the Silk Road.

Some people have traveled all over the world, and travel is a way of life to them. They perhaps know what to expect before they travel. That’s why the best travel is when it’s for the first time. Imagine a person who has always wanted to travel to the United States. Of course, they’ve probably seen the Statue of Liberty a thousand times on TV, and the White House, and all the other famous sights. But none of that would compare to the thrill of looking out of the cabin window as the plane lands, watching the cities and streets of the real America come into view.

Although travel is often just for recreation, it’s also educational. We may not know that we are getting an education, but we still are.

We’re learning every day: new words in a new language, new people, and new ways of life. But this learning takes place in the school of the world, not the classroom. One of the lessons we learn is undoubtedly a moral one. As we get to know foreign places, we come to understand that there are many different ways to live, and that the way we live isn’t necessarily the best way. The British politician Benjamin Disraeli summed this up well when he said, “Travel teaches toleration.”

【推荐1】Every November, Time magazine picks out what it calls “The 25 Best Inventions” of the year. Here, Teens has chosen some of the most interesting ones.

It’s hard to always keep coffee at the right temperature, especially in winter. It’s too hot to drink at first, but before we know it, it gets too cold and loses all its taste. The perfect level of warmth for a cup of coffee only lasts for 37 seconds, which makes the Ember Mug a great innovation. It keeps your coffee or tea at a certain temperature, anywhere between 45℃ and 62℃ once you set it through a smart-phone app.

TV cooking shows make cooking look so easy, but it’s almost impossible to get the recipes to cook the same as how the professionals cook. However, the Tasty One Top DIY cooking companion is here to help. Developed by Buzzfeed, the cooker can be connected to a smartphone app, which has more than 1,700 recipes and videos. You choose a recipe and the app will let the cooker know what to do. For example, it’ll tell you when to turn your steak or when to add certain ingredients.

Smart speakers from companies like Amazon and Xiaomi have added a lot of fun to our lives, but they’re still just faceless speakers. However, Jibo, developed by MIT professor Cynthia Breazeal, has brought smart technology to life. Said to be “the world’s first social robot for the home”, Jibo looks like a cartoon character. Inside its “head”, there are various sensors (传感器) and cameras, which allow it to recognize faces and speech. It can also set alarms, remind you of important things, tell you the weather and read news or messages from your friends and family.

【推荐2】People who live in Iceland are proud of their country and their origin. Complete independence from Denmark after World War II resulted in the country's fast development. They refuse to permit immigration(移民) though the country has a small population. Their attitude to foreigners is friendly but reserved(保守) .

The Icelanders regard themselves as one big family. Most of them earn their living by farming and people' hopes are centered on the land and its soil. Typical for rural Iceland are the isolated valley farms against mountains. Cultivated grassland stretches out from the buildings.

They mainly raise sheep and cattle. In spring, flocks of sheep are driven to mountain grassland and allowed to wander freely over the summer. When autumn puts its first mark on the mountains, the sheep are rounded up and driven down.

As in all countries where winter and darkness take up most of the year, the center of life is the home. The houses of Iceland were once built of wood, but now cement (水泥) is used in towns and stones in the countryside. During the long winters the Icelanders rarely go out of the house. When they must go out, they put raincoats over their heavy woolen overcoats and furs to keep out the damp.

【推荐3】These days, young people in some English-speaking countries are speaking a strange language, especially when communicating on social media.

Look at these words chosen by The Washington Post: “David Bowie dying is totes tradge” and “When Cookie hugged Jamal it made me totes emosh.” Or this sentence: “BAE. let me know if you stay in tonight.”

What on earth do they mean? Well, “totes” is a short form of “total if Similarly,” “tradge” mean: “tragic” and “emosh” means “emotional”. It seems that, for millennials, typing in this form is no only time-saving but fashionable.

As you can see, many millennial slangs are formed by so-called “totesing”— the systematic abbreviation of words. The trend might have started with “totally” becoming “totes”. but it now has spread to many other English words.

The origins of other millennial slangs are more complex than “totesing”. “Bae”, for example, has been widely used by African-Americans for years. It can be an expression of closeness with one's romantic partner or, like “sweetheart”, for someone without romantic connection. After pop singer Pharrell used the word in his work, “bae” became mainstream.

Some people might think millennial slangs lower the value of the English language, but Melboume University linguist Rosey Billington doesn't agree. She says when people are able to use a language in a creative way, they show that they know the language rules well enough to use words differently. Two other linguists, Lauren Spradlin and Taylor Jones, share the sane view. The two analysed hundreds of examples of totes-speak and discovered totesing has complex roots. It isn't simply an adult version of baby talk, nor a clever way to minimize your word count. Rather, it is a highly organized system that relies on a speaker's mastery of English pronunciation. It is about sounds, follows sound system of English and has strict rules.