Double bubbles: Plum artist’s work featured on cans from pair of breweries

Move over, Andy Warhol.

You’re familiar with his Campbell’s Soup Cans, the paintings that rocked the art world when he unveiled them — wow! — 60 years ago.

Today, quite a few artists are rocking a different type of can, one that may be even more popular than soup:

Beer.

This month, Plum resident Bob Freyer has the distinction of seeing his artwork displayed on new releases by two breweries, Acclamation of Verona and Spring House of Lancaster.

Oakmont residents Jason Yahnke and Danni Piccolo, who own Acclamation, are featuring Freyer’s talents on Ring-A-Round, a suitably seasonal pumpkin cheesecake sour ale. And the folks at Spring House selected his oil painting “Youth Gone Wild” to grace cans of a sour India pale ale as part of the brewery’s 2022 Limited Artist Collaboration Series.

‘Stoked’

Acclamation also is displaying his work with a show called “Stoked,” a collection of 18 skate decks, the wooden part of a skateboard, serving as canvases. The show’s opening is from from 5 to 8 p.m. Sept. 16 at 555 Wildwood Ave., during which time Ring-A-Round will be released.

“We think our brewery walls are a great opportunity to display local artists and promote local artists,” Piccolo said, with Joe Wos, also of Oakmont, previously represented. “I saw Bob featured in the Advance Leader, and I reached out to him: ‘Hey, we just started doing this in our brewery. Not sure if you’re interested, but I’d be happy to talk about it.’ And we sort of ran with it.”

The collaboration resulted in the Ring-A-Round can bearing Freyer’s depiction of children holding hands while circling a masked figure.

“That’s a painting I did in 2017, when I was going to do a series based off of nursery rhymes,” he said, and in particular, historians trace the origins of “Ring Around the Rosie” to the bubonic plague epidemic of the mid-14th century.

The subject matter definitely was along the lines of what the Acclamation owners were seeking.

“Because it is the beginning of pumpkin beer season, we wanted to do something that celebrates kind of the creepiness of Bob’s work,” Piccolo said, while incorporating the lighthearted aspect of brewing a beer that tastes like pumpkin cheesecake.

Speaking of which, Freyer gives the ale a thumbs-up.

“I’m not a pumpkin fan, because I like pumpkin pie, and that’s the only thing I really eat that tastes like pumpkin,” he said. “But after tasting that, it wasn’t so pumpkin to me. It was a cheesecake, and that’s what I like about it. I think it’s delicious. It tastes like fall.”

As for his “Stoked” show, Freyer welcomes the opportunity to show what he can do atop a long, narrow plank.

“It’s kind of like what I think would look cool on a skateboard,” he said. “I have so many at my house, and I like to study the art on them to see how I could incorporate mine into that style of canvas, at a specific width and length.”

‘Youth Gone Wild’

The opportunity to have his art displayed on Spring House cans came through the brewery’s Limited Artist Collaboration Series, which is going into its fourth year.

“I submitted five images of different colorful art pieces that I did,” Freyer said. “And they picked 12 artists, one for each month of the year.”

His month is October, and that’s appropriate considering the imagery of “Youth Gone Wild,” which he described as “a skull riding a Big Wheel being chased by a ghost.”

“It just made me think about my childhood, going on a Big Wheel and being chased by whatever, imaginary or sometimes kids, friends or neighborhood kids who were just trying to get me,” he said.

“Youth Gone Wild” also served as the title of his one-day art show at Ketchup City Creative in Sharpsburg, with a series of works drawing on a common theme Freyer’s experiences and memories from when he was young.

For instance, “Weekend Delivery” portrays a U.S. Mail truck driven by a crudely drawn stick figure of a mail carrier, resembling chalk scrawled on a blackboard.

“That’s kind of like me as a mailman, wearing hat sideways a little bit and just having fun as I deliver the mail,” Freyer said during a pre-opening meet-and-greet for the show. “There were two things that I wanted to be: an ice cream man — I wanted to drive the truck — and I also wanted to be a mailman. I always found it fascinating, getting the mail.”

The event also represented the release of the beer version of Youth Gone Wild, on which Freyer sipped enthusiastically.

“It’s refreshing. It has a nice kick to it,” he said. “It’s 7% alcohol, which I like.”

In addition to the IPA, Spring House has put Freyer’s “Heavy Crown” on cans of a sour ale made with gooseberries.

“We’re sort of a community-­oriented, eclectic brewery,” Scott Richardson, the brewery’s director of business development, said. “So the idea is that we get to promote creative people with our creative beer at the same time.”

The Limited Artist Collaboration Series, which is going into its fourth year, is the prime example.

“The way this is different from other breweries that do this kind of work, where they feature an artist here and there, is that we don’t ask artists to develop work for the cans. Original art: That’s what we want,” Richardson said.

“I don’t know of anybody who’s actually done it the way we’ve done it. We pay the artists for their work. They retain the rights to their work. And then we promote the hell out of it.”

He joins colleagues and friends in making selections, with the 2023 lineup scheduled to be announced Oct. 1. Up for consideration are all kinds of media, including photography, fabrics, graphics, screen printing, sculpting and even paper cutting.

Along with supporting artists, Spring House’s idea is to present something intriguing enough to prompt people to try new varieties of beer. And the images on the cans tend not to relate to what’s inside.

“We just want cool artwork. We want interesting. We want diverse,” Richardson said. “So when you look at Bob’s can, you wouldn’t say, ‘Oh, that’s a tangerine sour IPA.’ Not at all. You’re just like, ‘Well, that’s just dope artwork.’ And it just so happens to be a tangerine sour IPA.”

Given the somewhat unconventional flavors of the beers that feature Freyer’s art, Andy Warhol just may have been proud.

For more information about Freyer’s work, visit bfreyerart.com.