Love is Strong as Death

Works By Adrian Wood
Stove Works x Visible Records artist exchange 2026

October 2nd - November 14th, 2026
Opening reception, October 2nd, 6-8PM

Love Is Strong As Death invokes the wide-spanning political and social implications of love’s power for radical personal transformation through works on paper, a participatory installation, a lending library and conversation-based public events. The love that this exhibition invokes is the all-accomplishing love that incinerates egos and opens hearts, a necessary process for continued life. Not love as in flowers and kisses – love as in, I would die for you. 

The works on paper use an original gunpowder-based ink to render intaglio prints of quotations on love’s radical potential, drawing from bell hooks, James Baldwin, Sappho, and others. This explosive ink makes literal a militant love that burns through fear, hierarchy, and enclosure. These prints are framed by arched shaped plates that, together, imitate liturgical architecture, or grave marker epitaphs.

Charcoal-gray gunpowder ink is complimented by a separate, rust-colored ink made of melted-down guns, innovated by artist Thomas Little. Little’s process alchemizes weapons into creative substance, which is then used to print portraits of four individuals - martyrs - whose love led them out of this world in flames.

The exhibition deepens with abstract watercolor drawings made from the artist's internal observations of their transformations in, through and with love. Sometimes violent, often painful, and ultimately freeing, these images draw on surreal tradition from the likes of Hilma af Klint and Georgia O’Keefe.

This show features several elements of public engagement, most prominently, a participatory love letter altar to which visitors are invited to contribute directly using provided materials. An open call for love letters preceded the show, with over 60 love letters contributed for anonymous feature on the altar.

A lending library in the gallery will gather the books behind the exhibited texts for visitors to peruse during their visit.

The exhibition will open on October 2 at Stove Works with a public salon conversation exploring love’s capacity to disrupt hierarchy and nourish growth. 

In a closing event on November 14, all of the love letters from the love letter altar will be read aloud and burned in a public vigil event.

Open Call for Love Letters

Artist Adrian Wood is looking for love letters to anyone or anything for a love letter altar as part of the show Love is Strong As Death, October 2nd - November 14th, 2026. Letters will be shown with name and address redacted. They will be read aloud and burned in a public vigil event for the closing of the show.

Mail to:
Adrian Wood c/o Stove Works
1250 E 13th St.
Chattanooga, TN 37408

About the Artist -

Interdisciplinary artist Adrian Wood has shown work in the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Union Docs, Institut für Alles Mögliche (Berlin), Hundred Years Gallery (London), the University of Virginia and the College of William & Mary.  Their work has been supported by institutions including UnionDocs, Mana Contemporary, Experimental Sound Studio, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Adrian’s work has been featured in online broadcasts and publications including Hyperallergic and NPR. Adrian has been recognized and awarded through institutions including The University of Michigan, Johns Hopkins Peabody School of Music, and the University of Chicago. They received their Masters in Fine Art in Sound from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2019.

Stove Works x Visible Records artist residency trial exchange 2026.

In an attempt to strengthen regional ties between like-minded artist spaces, Visible Records and Stove Works are teaming up to offer a residency exchange program, sending one artist to the other’s space for a residency and exhibition opportunity.

Visible Records is an artist-run, community space. Our mission is to maintain an artist-centered space that nourishes and uplifts artists, activists, and organizers both locally and globally. Through offering affordable studios, art residencies, gardens, exhibitions and free Common Space events and workshops, our programming is eclectic and far reaching. We support the role of the arts and artists in worldmaking and dreaming toward a liberated and livable future. Visible Records is guided by values of reciprocity, generosity, cooperation, communalism, mutual responsibility, and co-liberation.