Canned Art

Canvas to Cans

Video

Art and industry met Friday as the Butler Institute of American Art and Exal Corp. unveiled a new advertising campaign. It features a painting from the local museum collection in one of the spray can industry’s largest trade magazines.

Butler museum, Exal Corp. intersect for ad project

BY RICK ROUAN

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

Art and industry met Friday as the Butler Institute of American Art and Exal Corp. unveiled a new advertising campaign.

It features a painting from the museum collection in one of the spray-can industry’s largest trade magazines.

The announcement signifies the confluence of three local ventures working together to promote Valley business. Keynote Media Group of Youngstown created the ad using art from the local collection for the local company, Exal.

“Exal is a very design-oriented business. We talked about getting a Picasso, but then we thought, ‘Why not keep it local?’” said Richard Hahn, president of Keynote Media Group LLC.

The advertisement features a line of six spray cans, each with a different portion of Colleen Browning’s painting “Telephone” from the Butler’s collection. Above the cans, the advertisement reads: “Our Aluminum. Your Canvas.” It appears on the inside cover of the current issue of Spray Technology & Marketing magazine and credits both the museum and the artist.

Hahn said he walked around the Butler looking for the right painting, and “Telephone” was an obvious choice.

“It was a natural for this product,” he said.

Exal Corp., which produces aluminum cans for worldwide corporations such as Cincinnati-based Procter & Gamble, employs about 400 people at its Performance Place plant and has plans to open a Salt Springs Road expansion that would double its work force, said Delfin Gilbert, company president.

Gilbert attributed much of his company’s success to the attitude of local workers.

“A business requires people,” he said. “Machines, you can buy. Money, you can get. People, you need.”

The company has plans to begin using a new, more efficient process to create aluminum products for various industries, Gilbert said, adding that it will produce 11 cans in the time it now takes to produce one.