Yee-Haw was founded in 1996 by Belcher, a Morgantown, W.V. native, and Kevin Bradley, who was born in Greeneville, Tenn. The company's first home was a barn in Corbin, Ky., but it moved to Gay Street in 1998.

Visitors to the store were greeted by a vast array of strange and lovely art that was made using the archaic letterpress technique, in which blocks of wood or linoleum were carved with a backward image and paired with handset type, with a different block carved for each color used in a poster. The resulting artwork ran the gamut from wildlife prints to festival promotions to social commentary that defied easy categorization.

(One popular poster featured political figures drawn to resemble old-time professional wrestlers, complete with nicknames — Vice President Joe Biden was dubbed "Mr. Foot in the Mouth" while former House Speaker Dennis Hastert was lampooned as "Mister Excitement.")

Over the years, Yee-Haw's work was commissioned by musicians including Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams and Southern Culture on the Skids, and in 2005 its illustration of author Cormac McCarthy graced the cover of The New York Times Book Review. In 2002, the company printed 50,000 invitations for Ralph Lauren, to publicize the opening of stores in Paris and Los Angeles, as well as the anniversary of a store in New York.

"What they represent is a bridging of printmaking and graphic design," said Beauvais Lyons, a professor of art at the University of Tennessee who has taught printmaking. "And they're widely known in both the design circles nationally and the printmaking community nationally."