Willie Cole: Old School
January 15 - March 13, 2026
“Willie Cole: Old School,” features new and recent works by the critically acclaimed American sculptor and printmaker. Cole’s second exhibition at Haley Gallery, “Old School” explores the meaning of words like “Love,” “Hate,” and “Dixie,” and the acronyms created by their letters, through a series of seven new “chalkboard” paintings. The show also features the largest work Cole has ever created, a painting inspired by the word “Patriot.” In addition to this new group of paintings, the gallery will present a series of rarely seen artist studies, created over more than three decades, in which Cole develops acronyms for the larger works, as well as additional paintings and prints never exhibited in Tennessee. This exhibition is curated by Paul Barrett, who is also curating the upcoming career-survey, “Willie Cole: My Brand is History” at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts in 2027.
Wayne White: Like You Know
November 20, 2025 - January 9, 2026
For almost 40 years, Wayne White has been conveying humor in all aspects of his career. While his most successful artworks have been his word paintings, which feature oversized text integrated into vintage landscape reproductions, this exhibit presents recently created oil paintings that are a mix of figurative, abstract, and textual compositions. The message of his art is often thought-provoking and almost always humorous, with White’s creations commenting on vanity, ego, and his memories of the South.
Earl Newman: Six Decades of Lyrical Compositions
September 18 - November 14, 2025
The renowned poster printmaker is serving as Hatch Show Print's 2025 Visiting Artist.
Newman has been designing and screen-printing posters for seven decades. While he started making posters for the beatnik coffee houses and early surfing competitions in Southern California, he is most often recognized for the posters he’s made for the Monterey Jazz Festival. In addition to an incredible array of vintage posters on view, Newman is collaborating with the shop on a batch of new prints that celebrate poster-making.
Flux
July 24 - September 12, 2025
Flux, the second collaborative exhibition between the Forge Nashville and the Haley Gallery, explores transformation, identity, and the power of interdisciplinary creation through the work of artists who identify as female and/or nonbinary.
Featuring 30+ artists whose practice reflects both technical mastery and fearless experimentation, the exhibit tracks the pulse of Southern creativity as it shapeshifts across form and meaning while showcasing a diverse range of art forms, including oil painting, sculpture, collage, glasswork, textiles, and handmade instruments.
Chris Chandler: Frequency & Distortion
May 15 - July 18, 2025
The exhibit explores the simplicity of breaking the alphabet down into its most basic elements and allowing the assembly of these shapes into seemingly endless combinations.
Inspired by graphic design pioneers like master typographer Jan Tschichold, Bauhaus, Constructivist El Lissitzky, and the Expressionist painter and printmaker Erich Heckel, Chandler’s current studio practice is based on the construction and deconstruction of modular type. By using the Vandercook 232P letterpress machine, Alpha-Blox & Futura Schmuck woodcut fonts to construct shapes, letters, words, and phrases then deconstructing them into the abstract by rearranging the prints—tearing and wheat pasting to create layers and movement.
Herb Williams: colorSHADE
March 20 - May 9, 2025
In the exhibit, Williams creates new informal compositions to collaborate with nature, document it, and remove the traces of human expression—a process he calls “color shading.”
Inspired by artists like Christo and Jeanne-Claude whose work emphasizes transformational boundaries, Williams draws on his time in nature to make this body of work which takes its sculptural direction from natural forms like trees.
Mark Mulroney: Snapshots
January 16 - March 14, 2025
Inspired by the life experiences of pioneering civil rights leaders, such as Rep. John Lewis. These artworks depict sadness, loss, and fear in American life. Mulroney presents this challenging imagery to encourage resilience and continued work towards a brighter future.
Heritage: Southern Vernacular
November 7, 2024 - January 7, 2025
Heritage: Southern Vernacular features sculpture and works on paper by Richard Dial and Charlie Lucas; paintings and works on paper by Thornton Dial, and Mose Tolliver; and quilts by Gee’s Bend quiltmakers.
On Friday, November 8, Gee’s Bend quilters Loretta Pettway Bennett, Francesca Charley, Marlene Bennett Jones, Cathy Mooney, Stella Pettway, and Andrea Pettway Williams will participate in a quilting demonstration in the Haley Gallery in the afternoon.
Movies & Mayhem by Madmen: Inspired Sin-arama
September 26 - November 1, 2024
The exhibit showcases the work of 2024 Hatch Show Print visiting artists, John Hancock and Carlos Hernandez, who blend their unique printmaking styles with textures and typography from Hatch Show Print, one of the nation’s oldest working letterpress print shops.
Since 1879, Hatch Show Print has created timeless designs that express and commemorate America’s evolving cultural identity. These designs include movie posters advertising horror films, westerns, film-noir, musicals, comedies, and more. “Movies & Mayhem by Madmen” reimagines this history, using collage and color to add new life to classic movie magic.
Fuse: Collaborative Exhibition with STATE Gallery + Studios of The Forge
July 25 - September 20, 2024
With over 30 works that together demonstrate the diversity of Nashville’s emerging visual artists, the collaborative exhibit includes oil and acrylic painting, sculpture and collage. Featured artist include Sai Clayton, Hannah Einhorn, Joe Geis, Chris Hundo, Dylan Lynch, Alena Mehić, Jernicya Onyekwelu, Meg “Pie” Pollard, Maggie Sanger, Brooke Schneider, Lorenzo Swinton, TC, Alison Underwood and Brian Wooden.
The Forge is a nonprofit arts organization dedicated to advocacy among Nashville’s creative community. The organization offers space and resources to makers and artists of all kinds across Middle Tennessee. STATE Gallery + Studios is a cornerstone initiative of The Forge. The program provides emerging artists with free studio space on an annual basis in addition to solo exhibition opportunities and mentorship for the duration of their tenure.
Lori Field: Saints, Tigers, Warriors, Lovers, Flowers
May 23 - July 19, 2024
Internationally acclaimed artist Lori Field, worked as an illustrator and textile designer before returning to her fine art practice in 1996. Since that time, she’s had numerous solo exhibitions around the globe, including New York City, Berlin, Toronto, Chicago, and Noyers-sur-Serein. Field’s mixed media drawings, paintings, moving images and sculptures straddle a border between reality and dream, past life and present. By playing with her own fairy tales and mythology, Field inserts a reoccurring cast of characters into post-apocalyptic romantic landscapes, imagining an altered future that might be tolerable after all.
Willie Cole: Lyrical Reconstructions
March 28 - May 16, 2024
Willie Cole: Lyrical Reconstructions features new and recent works by the critically acclaimed American sculptor and printmaker.
Cole’s creative process blends familiar consumer objects with references to the appropriation of African and African American images, resulting in sophisticated hybrids. His most recent bodies of work repurpose discarded water bottles or musical instruments, such as his 2022 commission, “Ornithology,” for the Kansas City International Airport, a work comprised of twelve larger-than-life birds made entirely from alto saxophones with an accompanying soundscape in honor of jazz legend Charlie “Yardbird” Parker.
This exhibit is guest-curated by Paul Barrett.
Marilyn Murphy: Curious Circumstances
January 24 - March 22, 2024
Marilyn Murphy is a professor emerita of art at Vanderbilt University. Her work has been shown in over 390 exhibits nationally and abroad, including mid-career surveys at the Frist Art Museum and a two-person exhibit at the Huntsville Museum of Art. Murphy’s work often addresses issues of women’s identity and roles, creating curious situations that imply a larger story. Many of her current pieces focus on the act of seeing, the creative process, or aspects of the human experience.
Wayne White: Language Is A Trick
October 5 - November 27, 2023
The Chattanooga-born artist, art director, illustrator, and puppeteer has used his memories of the South to create inspired works for film, television, and the fine art world for almost four decades.
In 1986, White became a designer for the hit CBS television show “Pee-wee’s Playhouse,” which received Emmy recognition. He has also worked on music videos, winning Billboard and MTV Music Video awards as an art director for seminal music videos, including the Smashing Pumpkins’ “Tonight, Tonight” and Peter Gabriel’s “Big Time.” His illustrations have been published in the “East Village Eye,” “New York Times,” “Raw Magazine,” and the “Village Voice.”
White’s new exhibit features twenty brand-new Word Paintings, vintage landscape reproductions integrating oversized, three-dimensional text with humorous or thought-provoking messages, as well as sketches and abstracts from his notebook.