The Knoxville Museum of Art will present the exhibition Design Lab: Yee-Haw Industries in the second of a two part exhibition series on graphic design's multiple applications, methods, and strategies. Yee-Haw Industries is Knoxville's nationally acclaimed letterpress print shop and design studio. They were recently featured in I.D. magazine's seminal publication "50 Designers/50 States," chosen above all other Tennessee designers to represent the state. Kevin Bradley and Julie Belcher founded Yee-Haw Industries in 1996. Working out of a barn, they began using 200-year-old presses to make woodcut prints. Their folk-art inspired style has garnered such clients as singer Lucinda Williams, RRL- Ralph Lauren, The American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, Maryland, Cartoon Network, and Washington DC's National Gallery of Art, for whom they are preparing materials for the blockbuster exhibition Dada.

Yee-Haw Industries hand carves imagery, sets type, and prints its materials on manually powered equipment. The work is reminiscent of American folk art, and enjoys a tactile effect from the presence of the artists/designers' hands and the physicality of the process. The exhibition will feature examples of Yee-Haw Industries' work with clients and its own creative output from the individual artists who comprise Yee-Haw. Examples of preliminary sketches, production stages, and finished products will illustrate the working process of a design from inception to distribution. Wood and linoleum blocks will be featured in the exhibition along with other intricate objects and devices Yee-Haw uses in their creation and printing processes. The opening reception and gallery talk for the exhibition will feature a printing press upon which attendees can create their own print. The exhibition will demonstrate the myriad ways that the artists of Yee-Haw fluidly combine their fine art talents and interests with their commercial work and products.