Youngstown-area artist giving mural new life
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LISBON -- With a bit of paint and a whole lot of talent, Youngstown-area artist Robert Vrabel is bringing nostalgia back to downtown Lisbon, one brush stroke at a time.
Vrabel was first commissioned by local preservationist Stevie Halverstadt to paint a mural of a Kist Kola bottle, commemorating the Lisbon Bottling Company. The mural can be found behind Lisbon's oldest frame house and nestled in the cross hairs of Washington, Vine and Exchange streets. The Lisbon Bottling Company operated on 319 E. Washington St.
Vrabel next turned his attention to a dilapidated but quintessential piece American folk art - a Mail Pouch advertisement - at the corner of Washington and South Market.
"I am just re-doing what was already here," Vrabel said, as he carefully painted the background around the iconic yellow block letters. "I try to keep it as close to Harley Warrick as I can."
In a span of nearly 60 years, Warrick painted or retouched over 20,000 Mail Pouch signs. Warrick began his career with the Bloch Brothers Tobacco Company which produced Mail Pouch in 1946 after returning from World War II. He had no formal training but after watching a crew paint an ad for the tobacco company on a barn on his father's Belmont County farm, Warrick asked for a job. He became the company's most prolific painter, working up until his death on Nov. 24, 2000 at the age of 76. His style was signature and his process of painting over yellow blocks of paint with black to form the letters saved on paint and gave his letters lift. It was a tedious task but the tenacious Warrick was up for it.
Vrabel mimics Warrick's style and painting process. He mimics it so much that the Bloch Family turns to Vrabel when they want to duplicate Warrick's work.
"The Bloch Family said that my work is the closest to Warrick's," Vrabel said. "I try to stay true to who he was as an artist. I use the same colors and the same font. The only thing I don't do is use the same lead paint."
And just like Warrick, Vrabel doesn't use a stencil. He cuts the letters in and as Warrick also did he starts with "e" in "chew" and works his way down.
For Vrabel, an artisan by nature and a signmaker by profession, painting signs is in his bones.
"I worked for years at McHenry's in Youngstown," Vrabel said. "If there's one thing I can do, it's paint signs."
McHenry Industries has been in the custom-made sign business for a half a century.
As for the business that produced Mail Pouch, turned barns into billboards and employed Warrick, the Wheeling-based company was founded by brothers Aaron and Samuel Bloch in 1879. Mail Pouch Chewing Tobacco is still produced by Swisher International Group headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida.