Belvedere-Tiburon Library exhibit features contemporary works influenced by pop art

Shaney Fago’s ‘Sound of My Youth,’ a painting of a vintage boombox created using recycled house paint.

In creating one of her latest paintings, Shaney Fago was inspired by a boombox like the one she grew up with as a teenager.

“In the 1980s, objects like the boombox were the primary vehicles for our music and entertainment,” she says. “They were mass produced, but they felt deeply personal because of the memories we attached to them.”

She says she wanted her depiction of the device to feel as physical and real as the memories themselves. She spent days searching specialty stores for the perfect tool to capture the rhythmic pattern of the old boombox speakers but found it in her own kitchen — a battered pizza pan with ventilation holes.

“It’s about taking those icons of the past and giving them a permanent tactile home on canvas,” she says.

The resulting work, “Sound of My Youth,” is one of two paintings Fago has on display in the Belvedere-Tiburon Library’s newest exhibit, “Art and Mass Culture: Commerce Meets Creativity.” The show, which runs March 19-May 13, focuses on the intersection between artistic expression and the visual language of mass production, featuring contemporary works influenced by pop art.

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