The Story of the Pop Cans

In 2007, when we were curating a Visionaries & Voices (V&V) exhibit at the University of Cincinnati Gallery at Sycamore (a now defunct space that was completely beautiful) called "Pop Life: Outsider Artists and the Pop Ideal," Victor Strunk, who was the director at V&V then, came up with an idea: to see if Kevin White, one of the first artists V&V tried to help, would like to paint some pop cans for this show. He did, and he still does. Right after the exhibit came down, Bill got the idea to build some shelving units for the cans, so they could be displayed and sold this way (see photo above). In other words, "Pop Cans" by Kevin White is a wonderful example of 2 + 2 = 5. Someone thought up the idea (Victor), someone executed the idea beautifully (Kevin), and someone else embellished both the idea and the execution (Bill). This one piece, as well, is "co-authored" by Andy Warhol, who originated "Pop Art" and opened up avenues for artists often not cannonized or even exhibited.

(Keith Banner, 2010)