The UMOCA exhibition and auction Boombox Benefit—a multi-artist showcase of ten ceramic pieces created from artist Horacio Rodriguez’s 1980s childhood boombox—will aid ten different social justice-focused organizations.
SALT LAKE CITY—Horacio Rodriguez was numb to the beautiful fluffy sand, crisp blue waves, and dense, moist air while sitting on a beach in Jamaica. Instead, inspired by the tradition of Jamaican sound systems, he was deep into conceptualizing his next artistic venture.
From March 10 through April 22, 2023, Rodriguez’s idea springs to life at Salt Lake City’s Utah Museum of Contemporary Art during the Boombox Benefit, a collaborative exhibition featuring ceramic boomboxes that served as canvases for ten different artists, including Lilian Agar, Miguel Galaz, and Jiyoun Lee-Lodge.
The boomboxes will be auctioned on UMOCA’s website during the show’s six-week run. Half of the bidding price for each artwork will be donated to ten different nonprofits chosen by the ten featured artists, and the other half will be split between Rodriguez and each respective artist.
“I wanted to raise money for social justice-minded organizations in town,” says Rodriguez, “so I thought, through this show, I could put all of that together.”
Rodriguez had the idea for some sort of boombox showcase for a while, but it wasn’t until recently, when he became a full-time working artist, that he was able to manifest what he had conceptualized. Previously, Rodriguez, who moved to Salt Lake City from Montana in 2016, spent a few years teaching ceramics at the University of Utah while maintaining his role as chairman of the board for the Mestizo Institute of Culture and Arts.
While Rodriguez quickly carved his place in the Salt Lake City art community with successful gallery shows and fellowships at various institutions, the Boombox Benefit is the first exhibition he has curated as a full-time artist.
The journey of pulling together ten porcelain canvases, shaped just like his childhood boombox from the 1980s, was not as serene and polished as the finished products. Despite Rodriguez’s talent and acumen with ceramics, the medium tended to be unforgiving and demanded a delicacy that Rodriguez had not yet encountered. “This is honestly the hardest mold I ever had to work with,” he says.
Tragically, Rodriguez had to take apart a priceless relic—the boombox he has had since he was eight years old—in order to successfully cast the shape. “I made molds for all of the buttons, the volume, the play button, the handle, as well as the body of the boombox,” he says.
After creating the molds, Rodriguez separately cast each piece in porcelain, then put it all together. He did this at least twenty times, but feels like it was worth it. Rodriguez then gave each artist a sample plate for experimentation before they began working on the official piece.
Roots Art Kollective muralist Miguel Galaz, in his style as a specialist in patterns and motifs, painted a cluster of symmetrical circles and Mestizo designs with color gradients that radiate outward from the center of the boombox. A boombox by painter Andrew Alba bursts with his signature flowers, clinging around the shape like patterned paper trying to disguise an obvious gift. Painter Vicky Lowe’s piece features a jaguar releasing a fireball from its mouth onto hers, projecting a sense of vocalization from the speaker.
While art-goers anticipate the release of each piece on March 10, Rodriguez, who has an artwork in Boombox Benefit, also looks forward to the April 22 closing party. “We are going to have a deejay and breakdancers and hopefully end the auction on a positive note, having raised a lot of money for these organizations,” says Rodriguez about the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Latino mental health organizations.
And whether the next time you use a boombox to hold over your head to woo a potential suitor (a Say Anything reference for younger readers) or to announce your presence and music taste as you walk down the street, remember that some seemingly forgotten pieces of technology can still break through as a means of expression.
“The boombox is an incredible object to amplify the messages of the nonprofits and artists participating in the event,” says Rodriguez.
