Somerville artist Andrew Fish’s take on boom boxes is currently on display at the Inside-Out Gallery in Davis Square. — Photos courtesy of Andrew Fish

By Beatriz Leite

Somerville-based artist Andrew Fish, talks about his inspiration behind the boom boxes and how it connects to this year’s ArtBeat theme. The Boom boxes are at the Inside-Out Gallery, in 1 Davis Square (CVS Davis Square).

The Somerville Arts Council is hosting an exposition where various artists showcase their work related to the theme: Pulse. The art council intends to explore everything that vibrates, pulses, and suggests life. All things that pulse, like hearts, cities, and drums.

Fish, as one of the chosen artists, opted to showcase his collection of boom boxes that he has been painting throughout the past few years.

“I did this show in 2021, and it was about being a GenX and the ideas of pop culture and technology, science, and all these different things that were happening in society,” Fish explains.

“The boom box was a natural part of that landscape because the boombox was portable music and it was a novelty at the time you could bring your radio out on the street and people would dance there or skateboard or roller skate or just break dancing revolved around the boombox,” Fish says.

Knowing what the ArtBeat theme was, it seemed natural to the artists to revisit the boom boxes, in a new creative way.

“I’ve been making them steadily all along, there are even more that are actually in the windows right now, and I’ll probably keep making them until I get saturated or bored with it,” says Fish with a smile.

All of Fish’s boom boxes have different looks, unlike the industrialized ones, as the painter highlighted, and he explains how they are created.

“They have their personalities, so they start out as these abstractions and there is a lot of play with form and color and gesture,” Fish explains. “And then they start to take on personalities, so then each one becomes a unique object,” he explains.

“I like to think of them as people, each boom box is like a person. They have their own beauty, their own quirks, their own aesthetic, and their own attitude, so I see a character in each one of them. I get quite fond of them,” says Fish.

Fish does not associate the boom boxes with people who are familiar to him. He sees them as strangers and hopes that viewers will do the same. According to him, they create a feeling of empathy, the way someone feels about a color or a texture will give them a different idea and feeling.

He highlights that he works on focusing in different series as a conceptual underpinning that will launch him into another series of paintings that relate to the initial concept. Another collection highlighting his youth is Limelight, which is available on his website www.andrewfish.us.