Art Attack, Services

By Kate Ledogar,

Art Attack Gallery used to be 108, and 108 used to be mine. My idea of running a
gallery is this: Show whatever you want regardless of its salability, keep it open peculiar
hours, and above all, don't let the pressures of business interfere with your creative
freedom. Now there's a business plan to take to the bank!
Of course this isn't the way to make big dollars in the game of art, so 108 had to close-
but only for a moment, before it reopened under new management in its new
incarnation: Art Attack.

Before I opened 108, I painted the walls. I took great pleasure in this, since the
previous business had chosen a combination of mustard yellow, red and purple; and
red and purple together always make me think of those Spree candies, which taste
good but look ugly. So I painted the walls a very light gray-something to serve as an
unobtrusive backdrop to whatever I decided to exhibit. Once the paint was on the walls,
I began to feel at home; but the real point of ownership arrived when I gave it a name. I
chose 108, because it's the gallery's address, and also it's a magical number. Once the
doors were opened, I felt comfortable that the gallery represented a reasonable
reflection of my (highly refined) taste.

I wouldn't have named the gallery Art Attack. If someone had suggested it, I would've
said that it was a silly pun that conjured images of cardiac arrest. Not to my liking. And if
I were the new owner, I wouldn't have returned the wainscoting and trim to its previous
color combination of red and purple, for the reason that I specified above. These are
just two of the creative decisions that reveal the contrasting styles of myself and new
owner Heather Somershein. Where I had staged a series of unprofitable art exhibitions,
Somershein has created a retail space. She offers items ranging from paintings and
decorated furniture to gift items featuring cartoon cats and dogs. She and I could never
have opened a gallery together, but I think the smart money goes on her if you're
betting on who will stay in business longer.
I'm not saying that everything at Art Attack isn't to my taste. There are some beautiful
goatskin lamps, little handmade purses and certain other pleasing objects d'art. I don't
care for much of the wall art, with the exception of the solo exhibition that's up now,
featuring the paintings of Caleb Sonik Neelon.

Neelon is a prolific international muralist, painter and illustrator, still in his 20s and
hailing from Cambridge. I suppose you could call him a graffiti artist, but that would be
misleading as far as his Art Attack show is concerned. The paintings on view are
colorful and cartoonish, sort of “Yellow Submarine”-style. And they could fall into the
dank crevice of cutsie-cutsie, were it not for the strange subject matter and despairingly
amusing phrases that he plasters over them. Most of the works feature boats, usually
sinking, one of them left high and dry, stuck into a stone wall. There are recurring
images such as shoes, luggage, and little puffball creatures with legs and soulful eyes.
But it's the messages on the gaudy signs he plasters all over his sinking ships that
really get me: "Makes Me Sad But -,” “Unrealistic Expectations," "Or Just Digging Myself
Into A Hole With Both Of My Goddamn Hands," "Fuck It,” “Fuck It” and “Fuck It." Call me
strange, but I find the sentiments very moving.

Neelon's show suggests to me that there's overlap of taste between myself and
Somershein, and Art Attack could-at any moment-exhibit something that I'm bound to
like. I just have to get past the cartoon cats in order to enjoy it. Maybe all the art isn't to
her taste either, but she's savvy enough to know that you have to fish with a range of
bait if you want to reel in the big ones.

Anyway, I'm glad 108 Beacon St. is still an art gallery, with or without the purple trim.