Gallery

Portals, Pathways, and the Space Between Us: Josephine Sculpture Park

Friday, August 22

Friday, August 22, 7:30-10:30 p.m.

Free and Open to the Public

Josephine Sculpture Park, 3355 Lawrenceburg Rd, Frankfort, KY

This event will explore 4 sites throughout Josephine Sculpture Park. The amphitheater will showcase live music and poetry by 6 artists featured in Backwoods Literary Press’ Discarded: A Rural Anthology. The exhibition will further activate a path, Shift (Due North) by Ben Lock, and The Porch Project: Take it to the Bridge by Heather Hart — an interactive sculpture inspired by important events in the Civil Rights Movement was designed for intimate conversations about our individual and collective identities. The sculpture bridges the past and future of Frankfort in connection to the Kentucky River—the aches of a past that we can never forget, and the joy and possibility of shaping what is in front of us.

Josephine Sculpture Park, The Carnegie Covington and Backwoods Literary Press are nonprofit organizations that rely on your tax-deductible donations. Thank you for your support.

Click here to learn more about Portals, Pathways, and the Space Between Us.

Portals, Pathways, and the Space Between Us is an exhibition in collaboration with KADIST that explores placemaking, shapeshifting, and the temporalities of Kentucky through the Ohio River.

The exhibition explores placemaking, shapeshifting, and temporalities of Kentucky through the Ohio River. The river is a point of study and departure, its historical significance rooted in division and symbols of freedom. The river acts as both a border and a point of shared connection—the complexities of this contradiction are unique to Kentucky, revealing the nuances of placemaking and identity.

Thinking of movement, fluidity, ephemerality, and environmental activation, this exhibition consists of outdoor pop-up video exhibitions that take place throughout the state of Kentucky. The exhibition spans six venues across six cities in Kentucky, occurring once a month from June to November 2025. The traveling exhibition is composed of two videos and a soundscape that represent international and regional voices that interweave disruption and contemplation through placid yet subversive temporalities.

– Sso-Rha Kang Curator, The Carnegie

Local Artists

Belle Townsend (Backwoods Literary Press founder) is a writer and organizer from Kentucky who believes in the power of storytelling to build solidarity. She’s worked across movements and campaigns to fight for working people and now serves as Communications Director for the Kentucky State AFL-CIO.

Trish J. Gibson is a photographer and writer from North East Tennessee currently based in Lexington, Kentucky. Her works are built of familial archaeology, exploring the relationships between gender, violence, generational trauma, escape, and the Appalachian south.

Jeri Katherine Howell (JSP Director of Programs & Partnerships) is an award-winning singer-songwriter, cultural producer, and educator. She cultivates creative experiences that inspire us to live in complex and caring relationships with one another and the planet.

Bayley Amburgey (she/they) is a black, queer, Appalachian artist and community organizer from Eastern Kentucky. She uses her online platforms to organize mutual aid campaigns and to educate folks on local, national, and international topics. Bayley is also a writer, singer, and currently works in education-based nonprofits.

Grace Rogers is a musician and writer from Bath County, Kentucky, currently located in Louisville.

Willie Carver is a gay hillbilly who wrote the Stonewall award-winning bestseller Gay Poems for Red States. He is an advocate for minoritized youth and has been published in a few places. He writes about the politics of innocence and about people and places that don’t always get seen. He likes biscuits.

Traveling Artists

Katinka Bock has a predilection for modest and natural materials like terracotta, wood, plaster, ceramic, leather and fabric. With a sort of delicate simplicity, she often associates these materials to found objects. For the artist, used materials hold a sense of something beyond their materiality. They are provocative because of the way in which they evoke deep, immediate emotions that precede conceptualisation. In her practice, Bock invests in the exhibition spaces and conceives her works in resonance. Just the same, she crafts a mental space in her work to subtly invite the spectator to reflect. Katinka Bock has been selected for artist residencies in France, USA, Germany and Italy at the Villa Medici, Rome in 2012-2013. In 2012 she was winner of the prestigious Fondation d’entreprise Ricard prize, France. In 2015 she received the Visual Arts Grant of the Fondacion Botin, Spain. She was nominated for the Prix Marcel Duchamp, France, and won the Prix de production 1% Marché de l’art, France.

Sora Kim is among Korea’s avant-garde artists portraying modern life conditions. She has been involved in many projects that are the result of collaborations with the socially dispossessed or through the participation of observers. By introducing personal relationships into her art, Kim proposes a new model and alternative to existing organizations and systems in our society. Sora Kim’s installations offer provocative and necessary explorations of the subjectivity of value and consumption. Sora Kim has exhibited her work internationally including the Mattress Factory (Pittsburgh), Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, ArtSonje Center, Rodin Gallery (Seoul), BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, REDCAT Gallery (Los Angeles), Atelier Hermès (Seoul), Istanbul Biennial (2007), Busan Biennale (2006), Venice Biennale (2003, 2005) and Yokohama Triennale (2005) and Espai d’Art Contemporani de Castelló in Spain.

Britni Bicknaver received a BFA in 2005 from Art Academy of Cincinnati and an MFA in 2017 from University of Cincinnati, both located in Cincinnati, OH. Her work has been featured in many exhibitions including Third Annual Red Square Film and Video Show, Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH (2003); The History of the Universe Part One: In The Beginning, Museum Gallery/ Gallery Museum, Cincinnati, OH (2012); The Nothing That Is: A Drawing Show in Five Parts, The Carnegie, Covington, KY (2017); and City Under Exposure, The Main Branch of the Public Library of Hamilton County, Cincinnati, OH (2022). Bicknaver currently lives and works in Cincinnati, OH.

Brianna Kelly is a multi-media artist, musician, community song leader, and puppet apprentice living in Cincinnati, OH with her spouse and dog named Slam Dunk. She has spent the last decade in various roles exploring the intersection of the arts, contemplative spirituality, and community building, while performing and touring in many bands in the Cincinnati music scene. She is currently finishing her debut solo album to be released in 2025.

Josephine Sculpture Park (JSP) connects people to each other and the land through the arts. JSP is Kentucky’s only sculpture park, free and open daily from dawn to dusk and features over 70 rotating artworks across 40 acres along 2 miles of trails, meadows, and woodlands. JSP provides creative arts and nature experiences to the community and transformative opportunities to artists while conserving the beauty of Kentucky’s rural landscape.

Backwoods Literary Press exists to reclaim, expand, and document the stories of rural life—including small towns, hollers, reservations, and borderlands—through the voices of those too often pushed to the margins. In an era of book bans, censorship, and political erasure, we champion artists and storytellers who are rooted in or connected to rural places—especially LGBTQIA2S+ people, Black and Indigenous creators, people of color, immigrants, and disabled communities. Through publications, digital media, and gatherings both online and in-person, we work to reshape how rural culture is understood—amplifying the complexity, resilience, and beauty of our communities.