Vittoria Benzine – UP MAGAZINE

Wide Open Walls: 2023

Wide Open Walls mural festival is returning with a new approach for their eighth consecutive edition. After painting California’s capitol city with 200 murals, they’re further enriching Sacramento’s landscape by enlivening local schools with artworks. In 2023 alone, Wide Open Walls has painted eight schools, sometimes near entirely, inside and outside alike, depending on each building’s architecture. Their latest work at Rosa Parks Elementary concluded May 22.

Ruttkowski;68 Arrives in New York City

How many legendary graffiti spots can you name? Some are a matter of taste, but others are undisputed—Basquiat’s one-time studio until recently, for instance, Freeman’s Alley in the LES hopefully forever, but also Cortland Alley in TriBeCa, one of the fine art world’s latest hotspots. Ruttkowski;68, a German gallery with graffiti roots and eyes beyond art history’s canon, marks TriBeCa’s latest addition—in Cortland Alley too, that illegal art destination dating back to 1817.

UP5 Preview – Muckrock & Roll: Jules Muck

“Rock ‘n’ roll is a participatory sport,” Steven Van Zandt famously said, a member of Bruce Springsteen’s iconic E-Street band. “It ain’t passive. It ain’t TV. Go out there and rock ‘n’ roll and dance and have fun.” Street art’s a participatory sport too, with all the messy nuance an active involvement with life entails. LA-based Muckrock has known this since long before she became the internationally known street artist she is today.

UP Magazine’s 2022 Editors’ Choice List

Here at UP, we chase the wildest, strangest, and most heart-filled stories out there, but there were a few that stuck out to us this year. Enjoy reading our Editor’s Choice Articles of 2022!

UP5 Preview – Transcendent CRASH: John Matos

Vittoria explores the remarkable career of John Matos, best known by his graffiti alias CRASH. From painting subway trains as a renegade teen, to painting guitars for Eric Clapton, CRASH demonstrates that a lot of hard work and a little luck can transcend you to the upper echelons of the art world.