Another Ricky Powell event just opened, in perfect timing with his feature in our Beastie Boys issue that is on newsstands now. David Kesting Presents "Ricky Powell", a collection of photographs from the artists archives reflecting the urban artistic and music references between these two times and cultures. Curated by Tono Radvany a longtime friend of Powell known for cataloging, exhibiting and printing Powell’s work.

Steve Powers aka "Espo" just opened a new solo show on May 18, 2013, entitled “Visual Blues” at Alice Gallery in Brussels. In Powers’s own words, “I’m in awe of the power and the reach of music. To compete with the majesty of music, I make paintings that are visual blues. I distill my everyday experience into paintings I call Daily Metaltations. They are painted very fast, fresh from the epiphanies that inspired them. The larger paintings draw from those metaltations and go to a deeper understanding of the transactions we make everyday to live our lives.”

Queens of the Stone Age have been pumping the promotion of their new LP, ...Like Clockwork, all over the web over the past month, and we have been excited to see one of our favorite artists, Boneface, get the attention he deserves. The artist created the album cover artwork for QOTSA, and now has over 15 minutes of animation going along with Queens' new music. Epic. 

We last took a look at the paintings of New York-based artist Eric White back in 2011. We feel the time has come to take another look through his past and more recent work! Eric's work is realism tinged with the surreal and occasional eroticism. His palette and imagery seems to come straight from somewhere between a Hitchcock film, the Twilight Zone, and a 1980s living room. Many of his paintings are also titled and based off scenes from old movies...  

This series of photographs by Ivan Forde represent the process that the reader's mind goes through when reading Milton's Paradise Lost. While attending SUNY Purchase College for literature, Ivan merged literature and photography to critique poetry. The result is this fascinating series of 8 photos titled Transformation. "The act of reading the poem invites readers to put themselves under the cold eyes of self-examination...The sight of our imperfections stimulates Transformation, resulting in a non-duelist view of all our parts - accepting the process between good and evil."

Ron van der Ende is a sculptor living in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. He specializes in wall mounted bas-reliefs constructed from found wood. He is a photorealistic sculptor using found wood! "The original color and texture of the wood is utilized to form a gripping and sometimes photorealistic mosaic. The realism is further enhanced by the perspective built into the relief. Van der Ende uses his method to conjure up dark industrial and space age imagery."

San Francisco-based artist Akira Beard is back with some wonderful new work! Akira currently teaches Fine Art Anatomy at the Academy of Art and exhibits his work at a variety of bay area and national galleries.

Daniel Horowitz sat down at his desk and began, with no particular purpose or direction, drawing on a blank piece of paper. That piece of paper turned into two, three, four, and eventually 365. A mixed media artist, Daniel's work has been featured in The New York Times, GQ, and The Wall Street Journal. He is now the cover illustrator for The American Reader. His 365 Series has been turned into a book (a limited print of 365 copies of course).

This morning we take a look at the sculptures of Brooklyn-based artist Ted Lawson. Ted combines digital technology with traditional sculpting methods to seamlessly produce conceptual objects. "His working process in an exploration into the human existential experience through imagined models of the universe as physical form." We are particularly intrigued by his "Eve" series, featuring sculpted female bodies of different shapes and sizes, some looking overweight, others looking almost sickly.

All month long, in conjunction with our Beastie Boys special issue, we have been asking some of our friends about their favorite BB's memories. The other day we talked to Jeremy Fish, and today, we spoke with Amsterdam-based Parra about his experience growing up with the Beasties. As we expected, there is skateboarding involved...