Nike has launched a new annual art competition called 1/1. You have to be based in Europe and be over sixteen to enter. The winner will have the chance to show at the Basel Art Fair and will design a limited edition pair of Nike Dunks, which I guess is a pair of shoes made by Nike.

The contest is open to everyone from filmmakers and photographers to graffiti artists and illustrators.

Nike's Nick Knight said "Both football and the arts cut across restrictions. Whether you're from any part of the world, class or part of society, you can realize a football match: that's what I like about it. It's the same with the arts: a great painting will cut across boundaries. And that global reach is what's really exciting about the '1/1: Art of Football' project.

We're looking for participants who are completely faithful to football but also want to express it in a piece of artwork. It could be a performance, a monument, a still - whatever they want. Hopefully that need to communicate will be the driving force behind the SHOWstudio/NIKE collaboration.”

An exhibit of more than a dozen paintings of the Highlands-Sea Bright drawbridge on Route 36 will take place from 5 to 7 p.m. Saturday at the Renaissance Emporium, 81 initial Ave.

Norma Wokas of Highlands is conducting the show. She is an supporter for the Citizens for Rational Coastal Development, a local grass-roots group against the state Department of Transportation's plans to destroy the 75-year-old drawbridge and replace it with a fixed-span bridge. A portion of sales proceeds will be donated to the legal fund of the organization.

For about a year, Wokas, who lives on Portland Road overlooking the drawbridge, has been creating her artwork depicting the bridge.

"I never thought the bridge would be gone," she said in a previous interview.

However, last June, when the DOT presented its strategy to region officials and residents and in Sea Bright, Wokas began creating her drawbridge collection.

This is the second time that Wokas will be donating her artwork to the organization. In September, the group held a benefit to help discharge the cost of legal fees; at the time, Wokas donated a portrayal to the organization for its art auction.

Google has celebrated Earth Day 2008 by hire the grass grow around their logo. BrandZ and Millward Brown have found that Google is the number one brand on their yearly "Top 100 Most Powerful Brands" list, so the Earth Day website should get a few extra visitors from the search engine massive today.

The Earth Day website is encouraging people around the world to call their leaders today to "ask them to enact tough and fair climate change legislation." My prophecy is that politicians worldwide will have their phones off the hook.

Those who do not know his name have casually branded him Monna yo pentang (the painting man). This is because Christopher Mokgeledi has for a long time exhibited his didactic artworks along public roads.

Before moving to his current spot in Broadhurst's Extension 16 near the Tsholofelo Park, he initially sat in front of Moselewapula Community Junior Secondary School in Gaborone Phase Four.

Art-passionate passersby, especially students, would usually invade his open workshop to view different artworks. Considering his outstanding works, some teachers advised him to apply for a part-time teaching job somewhere but he would not be persuaded. He instead decided to be self-employed after quitting his full-time job at the Botswana Telecommunications Corporation (BTC) in 2003.

"They used to call me Monna yo pentang. Even the elders who stayed in that place (Phase Four) used to direct their visitors through my working spot," recalls Mokgeledi, a self-made artist. He said his work place was converted into a gallery for students. They knew that everyday they found new pictures.

His artworks range from portraits, abstracts, wildlife, village scenes, landscapes and anything within the local environment. Some of his paintings depict historical events, cultural as well as religious ceremonies. He says, however, that he does not like doing portraits because they are time-consuming. He can also draw with pencil but he enjoys painting most.

Though he currently sits next to carpenters, among others, his paintings are more appealing than the furniture around him.

Patiently displaying his paintings along the road, he is always busy working on some, at the same time contemplating his next painting inspired by the flow of traffic up and down the busy street nearby. Africanism and religion are evident in most of his distinctive paintings.

Although he is not a trained artist, his paintings look similar to those done by art graduates. Just like music, poetry or dancing, drawing and painting are talents that someone is born with, he says.

He says art is in his blood and every time he sees something or moves around he visualises a painting. "In fact I realised my potential as an artist when schooling at Mater Spei College. We used to draw maps and I loved it when it was time for drawing," says Mokgeledi, who hails from Matsiloje.

During his spare times he drew portraits of Botswana's first President Sir Seretse Khama.

"Initially, I just did it for pleasure but some people bought my works and I raised money for oil paints and drew more." After completing Form Five he was employed by Post and Telecommunications, the company that split into BTC and Botswana Post, as an accountant though he is a professional materials manager.

As he started his full-time job in 1978, his contribution to art was limited. However, his level of understanding art improved in the process.

When BTC expressed their desire to retrench staff in about five years ago, he was the first to volunteer. He points out that he had done enough as an employee and it was time to get self-employed. "I pondered on a number of business ventures after my optional retirement but concluded that doing art on a commercial scale would the best thing for me," he recalls.

Though many people would find it ill advised to opt for retrenchment in the circumstances, Mokgeledi was brave enough to take the decision.

Now he is happy because he is doing what he loves most. Even if his paintings do not sell for days, he does not feel like dropping his brushes and start looking for a job.

The German artist Gregor Schneider is looking for people that are about to die and are willing to be a part of his exposition, which will be you dying.

Schneider told the Art Newspaper that he wants to "display a person dying naturally in the portion or somebody who has just died. My aim is to show the beauty of death." He also told them that his doctor in Düsseldorf is actively looking for possible participants in the exhibition of death.

I don't know much about the artist, and he may just be out to shock and collect his 15 minutes, but I don't have a problem with his plans. If the person dying is awake of what he or she is participating in and it's done in a sensibly tasteful manner, I'm fine with it. I possibly wouldn't go to the exhibition, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be exhibited.

It's a thousand times more tasteful than killing an animal for art, as I doubt that any of the animals from the recent Adel Abdessemed exhibition signed a assent form to agree to be filmed while they took a sledge mallet to the head.

In it's essence, fresco or fresco painting is an - application of natural mineral pigments to a surface on which a following chemical reaction takes place:

Ca(OH)2(s) + CO2(g) ----> CaCO3(s) + H2O(l)

Calcium Hydrate (burned lime stone or marble mixed with water) combined with carbon dioxide resulting in the formation of Calcium Carbonate - lime stone, marble. It is like "Painting with molten Marble".

Those elements naturally surround mankind from the beginning of time. Calcium Hydrate - moist lime stone walls of the caves at first and plaster walls and ceilings of the buildings later. Paints prepared from natural pigments made of minerals, earth oxides and clays and mixed with water. Painting in Fresco results in a painting being a part of the newly formed stone/wall rather than being a "film on a surface".

This fact makes fresco the only pure "organic" or "green" method of painting - no solvents, glues or man-made materials are used. It is also most permanent method of painting which will not fade, flake off, etc. The aged crumbling look of old frescoes is a result of the damage to the wall surface, not the painting. Recently cleaned frescoes by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel are the great example of the permanence of the medium.

Fresco painting is a direct product of the desire of our species to communicate by visual means when the “words are not enough or do not yet exist” and a desire to "leave a mark". A "Primal Graffiti" of our ancestors (wall paintings in Neolithic limestone caves) that have evolved into the Grand medium of the Empires and Nations. With earliest known examples from over 40,000 ago, fresco painting is the most practiced method of painting present in every culture and utilized by every known civilization for decorating of the most treasured environments, palaces, public places.

It is said that fresco painting is the logical link between architecture and decoration. During the Renaissance Fresco was regarded to as "The Mother of All Arts" this statement is as relevant today as it was then. Every culture and it's painting in particular is greatly influenced by fresco. Prior to "printing age" public buildings and common places, decorated with the wall paintings (frescoes), were the only sources from which people and artists specifically could learn about current painting techniques and styles as well as about the art techniques of the past - unearthed painting of Pompeii that survived centuries underground due to being true frescoes is just one example of that.

Visual reference provided by Frescoes led to overall development and refinement of the painting, drawing and composition techniques themselves. The magnificent frescoes of the Renaissance are the great example of the levels to which fresco painting has enabled artists to refine the art of painting. In fresco the artist has relatively short period of time to complete the painting while the chemical reaction is taking place, which is generally 6-12 hours (large works are done in sections proportionate to the area that can be completed in a day).

Fresco is a challenging medium - it does not allow for errors or corrections which require adequate level of the artistic and technical skill. Due to this fact paintings done in fresco are mainly created by the most significant artists of the time and consequently found in the most treasured environments. Being present in our lives from "the beginning of time" fresco paintings became the most recognized works of art throughout the world. Every culture and every nation does identify with the monuments of the past as their cultural roots. If the monument carries a painting it is most likely a fresco simply because that will be almost a requirement to last through the centuries or millennia.

Plano is home to a new congregation of Jews. The temple, Nishmat Am is located on the same block as a Mosque and across the street from St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Church at the northwest corner of Custer and Independence. The Mosque and the Church already have a history of mutual congeniality. It is a pleasure to be able to welcome this Temple to the neighborhood. The close proximity of these three houses of worship is an example of the multiethnic and inter-religious nature of the people of Plano. Plano is home to people from over fifty nations bringing their diverse cultures. Plano celebrates this diversity each winter with a huge multicultural celebration held on Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday, in downtown Plano, as well as celebrations at various times throughout the year in the Plano Independent School District.

It is in this tradition that the temple of Nishmat Am is going to be receiving a visit from a very special “Welcome Wagon”. The ten North Texas artists known as “Just Art”, happen to work right across the street at the St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Faith Formation Center. Just Art artists decided to welcome the newcomers in the same spirit they were welcomed when they came to Plano to work. They have been guests of the Catholic church on two Saturdays a month for the past three years.

"Just Art” is a group of ten area artists from very diverse ethnic and religious traditions. They have members that are Jews, Catholics, Mormons, Methodists and Agnostics. They have roots in Israel, India, Columbia, Italy, New York, Utah, Wisconsin and Texas to name just a few places. They work together in harmony, while making the most of their differences to enhance their shared goals. Their works are parts of many national, and international, private and civic collections. They have also launched a new web gallery where more of their work.

Just Art artists will be gifting Temple Nishmat Am a multi paneled work of art that shows their varied visions and techniques, expressing a single theme. This artwork centers on lighting the “Shabbat” candles- the ceremonial that takes place every Friday night in Jewish homes all over the world. Shabbat, the Hebrew word for Satuday, the day of rest is an _expression of unity, family, tradition, honor, and respect for ones faith and forefathers. The work of art celebrates this tradition with images common to the ceremonial Friday night meal. The artists chose candles, Challah bread and a wine goblet to express their understanding and respect of the traditions of Shabbat.

The style of each of these fifteen 12” x 12” canvases is as varied as the artists that created them. The art works range from classically representational art to abstract paintings. The small artworks are made using oil or acrylic paints. The canvases, while all are the same 12’ by 12” dimensions, vary from 1 inch to 2 1/2“ in depth giving the art work a more three dimensional look. The fifteen canvases will be bolted together to form an overall abstract form as they spread across the wall at the Temple.

Just Art will present the work to Rabbi Cohen and members of the congregation. The artists will be present to discuss their art work at the reception.

Changhua County Magistrate Cho Po-yuan promoted the central Taiwan county's long-stay tourism initiative during ameeting Wednesday with Katsuhiko Umehara, mayor of Sendai City in Japan, and shared his views on issues of mutual concern.

Cho, who is leading a delegation of county officials and councilors on the visit, also reached an agreement with Umehara, during their one-hour meeting, on enhancing bilateral exchanges.

Umehara said that both Sendai and Changhua are middle-size municipalities and one of the main goals of the two governments is to press forward with local development.

The mayor also expressed the hope that the meeting between the two sides would help promote mutual understanding and further exchanges in the future.

Cho, in turn, noted that Changhua County has engaged in frequent interactions with Japan over the past few years, and cited the example of the county government's visit to Hokkaido, Japan last year.

The magistrate touted the attractions of his county's newly developed long-stay tourism plan to the Japanese mayor, urging that Japanese visitors, especially those from the colder regions, should travel to Taiwan and enjoy Changhua's fine weather.

Cho said that on its current trip, his delegation will call on Sendai City's Finland Wellbeing Center to draw on the Japanese experience for Changhua County's plan to establish a health park, and will visit a business center and an international conference center in the city.

Noting that Changhua County and Tainan City in southern Taiwan were among the first areas in the country to be developed, and that Tainan has forged sisterhood ties with Sendai City, Cho expressed hope that his county would also form closer links with the Japanese city.

An exhibition of over 50 oil paintings providing a glimpse into the dream world of a female artist opened Friday at the Cultural Affairs Bureau of Changhua County in central Taiwan.

Huang Tsuei-chih, a native of the county, said she drew on her dreams and subconscious thoughts for inspiration in creating the paintings.

She told the Central News Agency that the works are a reflection of her personality, the audacious and bright colors and riotous strokes expressions of her passionate and freedom-loving nature.

Huang's paintings depict both actual and virtual objects that appear in her dreams, and the distorted images and juxtapositions of unrelated objects create symbolic meanings and metaphors, the Cultural Affairs Bureau said.

There is a lot of talk about design at the moment. It is linked with ideas like 'the creative industries', 'creative cities' and 'the creative class'. But what is 'design'? The term can be used to brand a diversity of activities from engineering bridges to engineering taste. In recent years many projects have emerged which intertwine art and design, some to exploit the connection, others to probe it. On Thursday night at 6pm, Katherine Moline and Toni Ross present papers about this.

Katherine Moline's paper will ask: Does exhibiting design make it art? These days designers often produce exhibition pieces – a practice known as 'critical design'. But since fine art and design are distinct fields, are claims for the legitimacy of design as art unfounded? Do they reduce avant-gardism to a marketing strategy?

Toni Ross is also ambivalent about the newly enhanced status of design as art and the recent 'massification' of design production and consumption. Via the art of Lucy Orta (which combines clothing and textile design, sculpture, architecture and performance) and drawing on the formulations of French philosopher Jacques Ranciere, her paper will explore how modern art and design resemble and contradict each other.

Ian Woodward and Kathleen Cattoni will respond.

This discussion will also provide the setting for the launch of the IMA's first issue of the Journal Of Art, which features an essay on Andrea Zittel by Toni Ross and an interview with Jacques Ranciere by Ross and Andrew McNamara.

Toni Ross is a Senior Lecturer in Art History at the College of Fine Arts, Sydney. Katherine Moline is an artist, designer, critic and curator, completing her PhD in experimental design at at the College of Fine Arts, Sydney.

For centuries, the women of the Mithila region of northern Bihar and southern Nepal have done wall and floor paintings on the occasion of marriages and other domestic rituals. These paintings, inside their homes, on the internal and external walls of their compounds, and on the ground inside or around their homes, create sacred, protective, and auspicious spaces for their families and their rituals. Although the images were similar, women of different castes developed distinctive styles of painting. In the aftermath of a major earthquake in 1934, William Archer, the local Collector, inspecting the damage in Mithila’s villages, saw these wall and floor paintings for the first time and subsequently photographed a number of them. Recognizing their great beauty, he and his wife, Mildred, brought them to wider attention in several publications.

In the 1950s and early 1960s several Indian scholars and artists visited the region and also became enamored of the paintings. But it was not until 1966, in the midst of a major drought, that the All India Handicrafts Board sent an artist, Baskar Kulkarni, to Mithila to encourage the women to make paintings on paper that they could sell as a new source of family income. Although traditionally, women of several castes painted, Kulkarni was only able to convince a small group of Mahapatra Brahmin and Kayastha women to paint on paper. By the late 1960s and early 1970s, two of these women, Sita Devi and Ganga Devi were recognized as great artists both in India where they received numerous commissions, and in Europe, Japan, Russia, and the United States where they represented India in cultural fairs and expositions. Their success and active encouragement led scores of other women to paint. Many of these women have also been recognized as artists of national and international stature.

Furthermore, women of several other castes, are now painting, most especially among the Dusadh, a Dalit community, and also small numbers of men.Over time, aside from the growing diversity of people painting, the subject matter of the paintings has expanded to include ancient epics, local legends and tales, domestic, rural, and community life, ritual, local, national, and international politics, as well as the painters’ own life histories. Artists of different castes and genders are now borrowing themes and styles from one another. Mithila painting has demonstrated extraordinary vitality and become a vibrant and aesthetically powerful tradition.

Mithila is an historic seat of Indian civilization where ancient ritual practices have survived for centuries. Maithili men have long been known as priests and scholars. At the same time, women have long been specialists on the floor- and wall-painting associated with a vast array of ritual practices. Thus when performing the samskaras, the rites of passage or initiation across the life cycle, Maithil Brahmin, Mahapatra, and Kayastha women use their fingers dipped in pithar, rice paste, to draw elaborate geometric and floral diagrams known as aripan, on mud- and cowdung-plastered floors. Each of the several dozen rituals has its own distinctive aripan.

Marriages involve numerous ceremonies and rites over a several year period, and are consummated on the fourth day of the second wedding in an internal nuptial chamber, the khobar-ghar. This room is decorated with wall paintings of protective gods and goddesses, and a kohbar - an elaborated lotus pond, an icon of fertility, fecundity, and prosperity. Wall paintings are also traditional near the gosain-ghar, the shrine of the family deity situated in a corner of kitchen. On the sacred day of Durgashtami, the eighth day of the festival honoring the goddess Durga, both walls flanking the kitchen door are richly painted with images of Durga astride her lion. During marriages and festivals the outer walls of houses of many different castes are also frequently embellished with protective and decorative motifs as well as mythological figures and scenes.

At midcentury Irish painting was at a crossroads. Irish painters were taking different paths. The art of Colin Middleton, for example, drew its strength from a sense of postwar angst and a flirtation with the unsettling emotional world of surrealism. Like Middleton, Patrick Hennessy, in works such as Exiles of 1943, merges an air of mysticism with allusions to the continuing legacy of emigration and its deep fissures in Irish society.

Exile and alienation seem almost natural states for Irish artists at midcentury. Dan O'Neill's 1952 painting Birth honors the role of women in Irish society, yet it also suggests an oppressive scene in which life itself is squeezed and forlorn. When Irish subject matter appears, as in Nano Reid's Tinkers at Slieve Breagh, it often identifies with rural poverty. Cumulatively, such works addressed the entrenched poverty in Ireland at midcentury, as artists saw their country being left behind by a general postwar European economic recovery.

In the past one hundred years, Irish painting has changed from a British-influenced lyrical tradition to an art that evokes the ruggedness and roots of an Irish Celtic past. Along this journey, it absorbed elements from European painting to become an art that draws strength from ancient Celtic myths to confront the deep political and social divisions and violence in Ireland today.

"When Time Began to Rant and Rage: Figurative Painting from Twentieth-Century Ireland," a new exhibition opening at the Berkeley Art Museum at the University of California, examines the complicated evolution of modern Irish painting.

Irish painting today grew directly out of the movement that gripped Ireland's writers, artists, and intellectuals at the end of the nineteenth century as Ireland's nationalist heart began to beat. The movement had its beginnings in the cultural veneration of Celtic Ireland, which provided the greatest sense of contrast to English culture.

It was in a climate of cultural resurgence and the desire for nationhood that distinct threads emerged in Irish painting at the turn of the century. Before 1900 there was little that was truly Irish in Irish painting. But after 1900, as nationalist energies began to coalesce and gather strength, the revived interest in the Irish language and in Irish culture led to a revival in the Irish visual arts.

Research results from University of Maryland physicists show that graphene, a new material that combines aspects of semiconductors and metals, could be a leading candidate to replace silicon in applications ranging from high-speed computer chips to biochemical sensors.

The research, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and published online in the journal Nature Nanotechnolgy, reveals that graphene conducts electricity at room temperature with less intrinsic resistance than any other known material.

"Graphene is one of the materials being considered as a potential replacement of silicon for future computing," said NSF Program Manager Charles Ying. "The recent results obtained by the University of Maryland scientists provide directions to achieve high-electron speed in graphene near room temperature, which is critically important for practical applications."

Intrinsic resistance results from the unavoidable lattice vibrations in a material when the temperature is greater than absolute zero. The intrinsic resistance determines a material's mobility, or the speed at which an electrons move when an electric field is applied to the material. The very high mobility of graphene makes it promising for applications in which transistors must switch extremely fast, such as in the processing of extremely high frequency signals. If other extrinsic factors that limit mobility in graphene, such as impurities and lattice vibrations in the substrate on which graphene sits, could be eliminated, the intrinsic mobility in graphene would be higher than any other known material, and more than 100 times higher than silicon.

Graphene is also a very promising material for chemical and biochemical sensing applications in which an electrical signal from, for instance, a molecule adsorbed on the sensing device, is translated into an electrical signal by changing the conductivity of the device. The low resistivity and extremely thin nature of graphene also holds promise for applications in thin, mechanically tough, electrically conducting transparent films. Such films are sorely needed in a variety of electronics applications, from touch screens to photovoltaic cells.

Principal investigator Michael Fuhrer of the University of Maryland's Center for Nanophysics and Advanced Materials and the Maryland NanoCenter, said the electrical current in graphene is carried by only a few electrons moving much faster than the electrons in a metal like silver. "Our current samples of graphene are fairly 'dirty' due to some extraneous sources of resistivity," Fuhrer said. "Once we remove that dirt, graphene, at room temperature, should have about 35 percent less resistivity than silver, the lowest resistivity material known at room temperature."