Bestselling Author and Kentucky Poet Laureate at Boyd's Station Gallery

The Boyd's Station Gallery is happy to host The Next Chapter Bookstore author event welcoming newly named Kentucky Poet Laureate and seven-time New York Times bestselling author Silas House for a reading of his work and Q/A at the Boyd's Station Gallery on Friday, April 28 beginning at 6PM.

Everyone is welcome and Silas House will be signing books following the Q/A next door at The Next Chapter Bookstore located at 201 E. Pike Street, Cynthiana, KY.

There will be plenty of the author's books available for sale and snacks at The Next Chapter Bookstore! 

Complete event details here.

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Silas House - Q/A and Author Reading
Boyd's Station Gallery
203 E. Pike Street, Cynthiana, KY 41031
6PM - Friday, April 28, 2023

Silas House - Book Signing 
The Next Chapter Bookstore
201 E. Pike Street, Cynthiana, KY 41031
Immediately following the Q/A hosted at the Boyd's Station Gallery 

Author Silas House Official Website

https://www.silas-house.com/about.html

The Next Chapter Bookstore Official Website

https://www.thenextchapter41031.com/

Boyd's Station 2023 Project 306.36 Summer Student Grants and Fellowship Awarded

Boyd’s Station is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2023 Boyd’s Station Project 306.36 Program fellowship and grants, which are awarded to college photojournalism and writing students to live and work during the summer in Harrison County, Kentucky.

Lukas Flippo | Yale University

Sophia Liang | Harvard University

Abigail Pittman | UNC-Chapel Hill

Lukas Flippo, a senior at Yale University originally from Amory, Mississippi, is awarded the $3,000 Reinke Grant for Visual Storytelling. Flippo will begin working in Harrison County beginning in May 2023 following graduation from Yale.

“I am interested in the stories where people and place intersect, those complex businesses, intersections, farms, and roads where the past and present collide across generations, politics, and socioeconomic status to build a future,” Flippo said. “I hope to approach Harrison County with an open mind and an empathetic sense of respect and honor for the people who make their lives there, focusing on stories that mold those people and the places they hold dear. I will learn about the challenges a community like Harrison County faces to inform my ongoing passion for documentation of rural America.”

Abigail Pittman, a junior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill originally from Four Oaks, North Carolina, is awarded the $3,000 Bell Family Storytelling Grant recipient. She will begin her work documenting Harrison County beginning in May 2023.

“Because I’m also from a rural area in North Carolina, I’m interested in what rural storytelling can look like given time,” remarks Pittman, “Working with the Boyd’s Station project would give me tools to document my hometown. I’m confident that, again given time, one could find equally interesting and important stories as in a metropolitan area. Voices in rural areas are not heard often, especially minority voices, and it’s important to recognize both things.”

Sophia Liang, a senior at Harvard University studying English and neuroscience and originally from Cherry Hill, New Jersey, is awarded the $3,000 Mary Withers Rural Writing Fellowship. She will be working on articles for Project 306.36 and for Boyd’s Station’s media partner, the Louisville Courier-Journal, in June 2023 following her graduation from Harvard.

“I’m an aspiring science journalist, and I think this fellowship would provide me a unique opportunity to examine rural healthcare systems,” notes Liang, “which tend to be overlooked and underreported. Although rural Kentucky is a far cry from my suburban New Jersey hometown, I’m so excited for this opportunity to develop my reporting skills, explore the outdoors, and meet lots of new people.”

The Boyd’s Station Project 306.36 Visual Archive

The three grant recipients for 2023 represent the 5th class of students at Boyd’s Station. Our alumni have gone on to become professional photographers, writers, and artists throughout the country, and continue giving back to the program.

The Boyd’s Station Project 306.36 Visual Documentary and Writing Program is the annual archive project focused solely on documenting the people and places of Harrison County, Kentucky, creating an archive of these student journalists' work while providing world-class mentoring and guidance to this next generation of storytellers. 

To learn more about Project 306.36, please visit www.boydsstation.org/about-306. 

Boyd’s Station thanks the Clyde N. Day Foundation and Clifford Craig Heritage for the continued funding and support in making these highly competitive grants and fellowships possible for the success of Project 306.36 each year. We also would like to thank Photoshelter and The Louisville Courier-Journal and Nikon Professional Services for their yearly support of providing their amazing services for use by the student taking part in Project 306.36.

Boyd's Station Artist Guild Call for New Members

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Boyd’s Station is pleased to formally announce an open call for new creative artists, apprentice artists, and supporters of the arts to join the newly formed Boyd's Station Artist Guild in Harrison County, Kentucky at the Boyd's Station Gallery.

Founding Boyd's Station Artist Guild members Kris Grenier, Arden Barnes, Nicolette Mallory, Wes Mallory, Ray Duke, Margaret Heltzel and Michael Swensen have been organizing this next Boyd's Station endeavor over the past months and are now ready to formally welcome local artist, students and supporters to join.

Regardless of where you are on your artistic journey, you’ll benefit from the resources and community available to members of the Boyd’s Station Artist Guild. Creative and Apprentice members may submit their work for inclusion in the twice-annual Guild Showcases. Creative members may benefit professionally from the opportunity to host artist talks or workshops at the Boyd’s Station Gallery, sell their original or derivative works in the marketplace, and publish a profile on the Boyd’s Station website. Apprentice members are supported and encouraged in their artistic development by the Guild’s mentorship program. The community created by the Guild offers opportunities for artistic collaboration. Finally, by bringing together members of the creative industry of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, the Boyd’s Station Artist Guild amplifies the voices of visual artists and allows the building of momentum for a variety of projects and ideas.

The Boyd’s Station Artist Guild inaugural call for prospective new members will be open for online consideration on Monday, January 2 through Monday, January 31, 2023, at www.boydsstation.org/bsag.

The Boyd’s Station Artist Guild has three levels of membership:

• Creative Members - Boyd’s Station Artist Guild creative membership will be considered for anyone who is actively engaged in their craft or art, who is sharing their work with the public in person at events/galleries or online, and who will volunteer to help keep the Boyd’s Station Gallery open to the public and assist with organizing and planning of other Guild events. Creative members may exhibit work in the Guild Showcases, attend general meetings, and have full-membership rights to make motions, vote, and creative members are eligible to hold office in the Boyd’s Station Artist Guild.

• Apprentice Members - Apprentice members include both student artists and novice artists. Students age 15 and up may apply for membership. Apprentice members may submit work for Guild Showcases, attend general meetings, and vote on Boyd’s Station Artist Guild matters. Apprentice members are not eligible to hold office in the Boyd’s Station Guild.

• Supporting Members (non-artist contributing members) - Boyd’s Station Artist Guild welcomes those who do not desire to become contributing creative or apprentice members but enjoy and support the artistic abilities of others to apply. The Boyd’s Station Artist Guild relies on members volunteering their time and talents to keep Boyd’s Station Gallery operating. Supporting members can attend general meetings, and vote on Boyd’s Station Artist Guild matters. Students age 16 and up may apply for membership. Supporting members are not eligible to hold office in the Boyd’s Station Guild.

The People Project

What exactly is the Boyd’s Station People Project?

The Boyd’s Station’s People Project has a really big goal. We want to photograph every person living in Harrison County. That is the People Project.

Just come on down to the Boyd’s Station Gallery at 203 E. Pike Street in Cynthiana on Friday, July 9 from 5PM to 7PM and we will make a portrait of you shot by one of the Boyd’s Station photographers.

Your portrait and story will be archived in the Boyd’s Station archive and you will have access to download your image as well.

Come join us to take part as we begin this amazing project.

See you at the gallery!

Boyd’s Station Gallery

Friday, July 9, 2021

5-7 PM

203 E. Pike Street

Cynthiana, KY

www.boydsstation.org

Melina Walling | On Details in Harrison County

On Details In Harrison County

Photo & Story by melina walling

Originally Published in the cynthiana democrat

My first impression after a week in Harrison County: this place brims with details, a richness I never could have imagined.

The bright flicker of a bluebird as it flashes across the road. Fields dappled with purple flowers. The dark grunts of cattle, twin shadows of buzzards overhead. Cigarette smoke and lingering scents of beer and bourbon. At night, screams of insects and bullfrogs. Raindrops smudging my notebook and beating sun baking into my shoulders. The white moth dying slowly in my shower.

Melina Walling

My name is Melina, and I am this summer’s Mary Withers Rural Writing Fellow at Boyd’s Station, a nonprofit focused on documenting the people and places of Harrison County. This fellowship represents a new experience for me; all my life, I have lived in the suburbs. Big cities and farms are equally unfamiliar to me. I step off the subway in New York City and mistake the Chrysler Building for the Empire State. I drive too slowly on winding country roads.

Before the pandemic, when we needed something fun to do, my mom and I would drive down the road to the second-largest mall in America and browse racks and racks of clothing that stretch on for over a mile. When the pandemic hit, we did even less. We walked the same five cul-de-sacs over and over. We watched TV, hours and hours of it (an entire season of America’s Next Top Model in two days). 

Scholar Marc Augé calls suburbs “non-places.” After a year spent in the suburbs, I felt that his description was more applicable than ever. I wanted to leave the hollowness of non-places behind. I wanted to come to Harrison County because I craved a connection to place.

I found that connection almost immediately. Here, every day, my body meets the land in ways it never could before. When I walk through the fields, I use all my senses. I train my eyes on the ground to dodge cow pies and let my nose alert me to the presence of skunks. I feel the stickiness of sunscreen and bug spray and hear the rustling of small creatures in the bushes.

I’ve done more new things in the last two weeks than I have in the last year. I learned how to cast a fishing line, how to drink beer under the smoke of a bonfire. I’ve watched people work with practiced hands at skills that were once completely invisible to me: changing the twine in a hay baler, throwing corn out to the cows. And I’d never understood how big cows are—how drool drips out of their mouths as they shake their heads, how they vie for a place at the fence near the feed bucket.

The people, too, wear their details on their sleeves, and share them with a warmth I have rarely experienced. A woman I’d just met described the yellow and purple bruises that led to her son’s leukemia diagnosis. A farmer I’d just met showed me, with a jolt that nearly threw me from the buddy seat, how the second and fourth gears of his tractor have been getting stuck. A deacon I’d just met told me about growing up here as a latchkey kid. He remembers exactly how the streets changed after the flood of 1997.

Here in Harrison County, where the details are so vivid, I hope not only to document what life is like today, but also to understand how everyday details are changing. I want to dig into Harrison County’s deep history, so unfamiliar to me as someone who has never lived in the South. I hope to gain an intimate understanding of the farmland, so vital to all of our existence, which changes every season and year. What will the farms of the future look like? How will this land, once a buffalo hunting ground and a site of historic battles, evolve over the next few decades?

Cynthiana Democrat | June 23, 2021

I am here with an open mind, to hear stories and immerse myself in this community, because I believe these details matter. I will certainly reveal my ignorance more times than I’d like to this summer—I’ve already had to learn what “in hay” means, how big an acre even is. But I feel driven by my curiosity and desire to learn. After all, this place, where the earth is still not paved over with shopping malls and parking garages, represents a vital part of the future we are all building together.

It’s wonderful to meet you, Harrison County, land of green hillsides and orange sunsets. Or, as Boyd’s Station photo fellow James Year called it, “the land of long goodbyes.” Here, people linger to talk long after they should have left, because there is just so much to say. I am excited to hear and share your stories for the next three months. I already have a sneaking suspicion that I will want to linger in my goodbye, too.

If you see me on the street, please stop me to say hello! And if you have a story idea, contact, or lead, please reach out. My email is melzyorca@gmail.com. And you can also find me in person—I’ll be spending lots of time in the Boyd’s Station Gallery on Pike Street, along with the photography fellows Lily Thompson and James Year. 

I look forward to meeting you soon.