BIOGRAPHY
Herb Williams was born in Montgomery, AL, in 1973. Mr. Williams received a BFA in sculpture from Birmingham-Southern College. Upon graduation the artist immediately went to work at a bronze foundry in West Palm Beach, FL. There he cast hundreds of sculptures with the atelier Popliteo and the last work of art by photo realist Duane Hanson, “Man on Riding Lawnmower.” Herb Williams then moved to Nashville, TN, where he has lived and created art since 1998. Mr. Williams received The Joan Mitchell Foundation Museum Purchase Grant in 2005, the Next Star Artist Award in 2008, and was sponsored by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in 2011. He received his first public art commission in 2017 to create “Skylake” for the Smith Springs Community Center, and has just been awarded another public art commission to create six larger-than-life sculptures for the International Concourse at the Atlanta airport.
His artwork was featured at an Inaugural art exhibit in Washington, DC, with Shepard Fairey, and he opened “Plunderland”, a walk-in room installation consisting of almost 500,000 crayons at the art gallery Rare, in Chelsea. Mr. Williams just completed a large-scale outdoor installation at the National Ranching Heritage Center in Lubbock, Texas, which dealt with the wildfire devastation, and raising awareness for education, safety, and future planning. A collection of seventy sculptures and paintings were exhibited in Shanghai, China. Recently, his multi-story graffiti paintings have been featured along with internationally known street artists in the Nashville Walls Project. Herb Williams is currently represented by The Rymer Gallery in Nashville, TN, the Sozos Gallery in Charlotte, NC, and the Dawson Cole Gallery in Laguna Beach, CA.