"A Driving Tour of Elliott County Kentucky" by Sharon Boggs

This is a little book originally published by Kindle and written by Sharon Boggs, a neice of Appalachian folk artist Minnie Adkins who also lives in Elliott County Kentucky where she was a teacher for many years. The book gives a very detailed driving map of the county and includes at least a basic mention of most of the roads in the county. For myself, the best piece of information I got from the book was the story of how seven Civil War soldiers, whose loyalties were not known apparently, were murdered near Sandy Hook after the Civil War had ended. There is a state historical marker a couple of miles west of Sandy Hook on Kentucky Route 7 which I believe marks the spot where those men are buried. It is on the side of the road without a decent parking space without either parking some distance away and walking to the marker or simply imposing and parking in a nearby driveway to a home. I admit I have considered doing one or the other several times but have never done so in order to actually read that marker. The book also gives a basic explanation of the Laurel Gorge Cultural Heritage Center site which is one of my favorite hikes in Eastern Kentucky although I don't hike there regularly. There are also a large number of historical photographs of people and places in Elliott County but the reproduction quality is poor. The book also gives a basic history of the small local post offices whch used to be operarting in the county, nearly all of which are now defunct. The book is available on Amazon for $10.00. If you want to know more about Elliott County Kentucky, it could be worth your time and money.

"Artisans Harvest" At Morgan County Wellness Center, August 2, 2025

Yesterday, my wife and I attended Articans Harvest at the Morgan County Wellness Center in West Liberty, Kentucky, which was originally called "Art In The Park" and held at Old Mill Park. But a few years ago, the location was changed due to rainy weather and it has been held at the Wellness Center gym ever since. When it began in the park, it was more a folk art show and sale than what it has become since the move. It is now heavily oriented toward crafts rather and folk art. Minnie Adkins, the famous Elliott County folk artist still attends and Brent Collinsworth from Wolfe County was there last year but did not attend this year. Steve Sargent, who makes nice lamps from whiskey bottles had attended last year but was there only as a spectator this year. There also is a small number of local vegetable farmers who attend to sell a few vegetables. It is not what it used to be. I do understand that since it is organized by the local Agricultural Extension Service office that their funding source probably requires that it include the vegetable farmers and some others such as users of the Extension Service food preparation trainings they sometimes do. But I go primarily to see, and sometimes buy, folk art, and I prefer to see it more heavily oriented in that direction which I am afraid might not happen again. This also reminds me of what used to be called Morgan County Farm, Home, and Family Day which was more oriented toward individual presenters who taught small groups in a classroom setting about a wide variety of topics oriented to life in a rural community. It hasn't been held in several years. But this event now known as Artisans Harvest is a great place to go to meet a few people in the community whom we don't get to see on a regular basis. We ran into Steve Sargent whom I've known for years; Minnie Adkins who is one of my favorite folk artists, and whom I had seen two weeks ago at Minnie Adkins Day in Sandy Hook; Sarah Fannin, the local Extension Agent who was there no doubt in her official capacity; Danny Joe Gevedon, who is a retired banker and friendly acquaintance who also plays Bluegrass bass; Austin and Kathy Shaw, from whom I buy farm fresh eggs; and several others whom I might have forgotten to mention. Since there was only marginal interest in Minnie's somewhat expensive folk art, I was able to spend some time talking to her and got Steve Sargent to take a photo of us. I try to always get a photo with Minnie when we run into each other. Minnie was in a generous mood yesterday and offered to give one of her famous roosters to a female who said she makes handmade brooms. But she declined and insisted on buying one of Minnie's unpainted roosters, staing that getting the rooster was the only reason she had attended the event. Just before we left, Candice happened to drive her wheelchair past Minnie's table, and Minnie promptly stood up and carried Candice a hand carved and painted cardinal which she gave her. It is proudly displayed on a shelf with my two hand painted and carved Evening Grosbeaks from Minnie's cousin Tim Lewis. It was a very community oriented event for us since we saw so many of our friends and acquaintances, got to look at some good crafts work, visit with Minnie, Steve, and Danny. We left the event and chose to drive to the Minor E. Clark Fish Hatchery near Morehead so I could hike. But I will discuss that in a separate post.

Visiting With Tim & Lola Lewis, July 25, 2025

I had an interesting and fun visit with Appalachian Artist Tim Lewis and his wife Lola yesterday, July 25, 2025, in their home in Elliott County Kentucky. I have known Tim for a couple of years and known about his art for a bit longer than that. Tim is a cousin of the famed Minnie Adkins but his art work is his own and his reputation as an artist is perfectly capable of standing on its own two feet. Tim has primarly been a sculptor in stone for many years but also does wonderful carved and painted wooden birds. I am proud to say that I now have two of those Tim Lewis birds in my own collection. They are actually representations of the Evening Grosbeaks which visited our home for about two months nearly two years ago. Tim had recently completed those two birds for me and we had talked at the recent Minnie Adkins Day celebration in Sandy Hook. But we had also spoken about getting together sometime soon for a while and I decided to take a hot summer drive to Tim's house for a visit.

That drive to the visit was an adventure in itself. Tim's house is not easy to locate even for a person like me who has spent his life in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky and Southern West Virginia. It is located on a back road, up a sizeable hill, and situated in a tree shaded location where it is not possible to see it from the road. But I finally got there and it was worth the trip.

I had also taken a photograph of both grosebeaks together near a wall outlet in order to be able to show them as a pair and to give an indication of their size. This is that photograph.

While I was at Tim's house, he and Lola and I talked about a variety of topics including a lot of art, mostly art actually, and they also showed me several pieces of art from their collection including a small piece by the famed folk artist Howard Finster. They have an excellent carved and painted Native American Chief which Tim created many years ago, a nice little piece of a carved alabaster angel which was Lola said was the first piece Tim ever carved and gave to her when their relationship was young. The house is full of art, exhibition catalogues, and excellent memories. In a wonderful act of generosity, they gave me a copy of a catalogue from a series of traveling exhibitions of Tim's work from 2008 and 2009. Yes, they did have a few extra copies of that catalogue from the past. It contains a wonderful group of photographs of Tim's works from that time period, several very interesting and insightful articles about Tim and his work, and it is truly enlightening to study if you are into the stone carvings of Tim Lewis. It was a truly great visit!

Minnie Adkins Day, July 20, 2024, Sandy Hook, Kentucky

 

Roger D. Hicks and Minnie Adkins

My wife Candice and I traveled to Sandy Hook, Kentucky, in nearby Elliott County on Saturday, July 20, 2024, for this year's annual Minnie Adkins Day which is held each year on the third Saturday of July.  Minnie Adkins Day is both a celebration of the life and work of Minnie Adkins and a general, small town Folk Art festival at which numerous folk artists from all around the southeast exhibit and offer for sale their own works. We both really enjoy the brief amounts of time we get to spend with Minnie and have also recently attended an exhibition of her work at the Huntington Art Museum.  Due to the fact that we both love and collect Folk Art, we have come to know several Folk Artists in the Eastern Kentucky area.  Some of them we might see and converse with a few times during the year, and others we only see at this affair.  It is always fun to see the art, talk with artists, other lovers of Folk Art, and a few of our neighbors in the area we might not have seen for some time.  It was also sad to learn at the festival that Lexington collector Thomas "Tom" Clark had died earlier in the year, and I had actually gone there wanting to be able to ask him about someone who might be able to repair a piece I have which has been damaged.  Tom was a great collector and dealer in both Folk Art and general antiques.  For many years, he had operated an antique and Folk Art shop on North Broadway in Lexington which he had closed a few years ago.  I had known Tom in a limited way for several  years since I had outbid him once for a piece at an estate sale.  He was a vast library of information about Folk Art, Folk Artists, and antiques and he will be missed by his many friends and customers.  

Minnie Adkins and Brent Collinsworth

One of the area Folk Artists who has become a genuine friend, and whose work I collect, is Brent Collinsworth who is a wonderful artist, great conversationalist, and a valued source of information also.  We were both able to spend some time with Brent and his wife at this festival and that is always a treat. Brent's work is always interesting, entertaining, and, at times, surprising.  

 

Tim Lewis

I was also able to spend some time talking with Tim Lewis who is a first cousin to Minnie Adkins and also a native of Elliott County.  Tim has worked in both stone and wood and has some of his work in the Smithsonian in Washington, DC, as does Minnie.  Tim loves to carve and paint birds and also had a good carved and painted depiction of The Last Supper at the show.  I was remiss in not taking an actual photograph of that piece and some of Tim's other work.  Sadly, he has had some relatively serious health problems this year which resulted in a hospitalization over last Christmas.  As a result, he had probably less work at this show than I have seen him exhibit for sale in the past.  Tim is also a great conversationalist and fun to talk with.  

Minnie Adkins Day is always fun to visit and participate in and has as many as 100 artists exhibiting and selling their work most years.  This year there was a threat of rain all day although it generally only sprinkled but it seemed that this had depressed visitor attendance to a degree. 

 

Hiking At Laurel Gorge Cultural Heritage Center, September 15, 2023

 

Photo above by Laurel Gorge Cultural Heritage Center/Facebook. 

Last Friday, September 15, 2023, I visited and hiked at Laurel Gorge Cultural Heritage Center just outside Sandy Hook, Kentucky, in Elliott County and not far from Grayson Lake.  I had been there with my wife, Candice because we both had appointments in town that morning.  I have gone to the entrance gate many times when I have been in Sandy Hook but had never found it open before because I was either there after regular business hours or on the weekends.  The road to the center is closed on the weekends when most people hike and after the Cultural Center closes each day during the week. The times when the gate is closed are also nearly identical to the times when many, if not most, people hike.  The entrance is just off Old Rt 7 and 32 Old Laurel Curves Road and in a fairly isolated location out of sight of any other buildings and on a lightly traveled road so I had never chosen to park near the gate and walk around it since my wife Candice is usually with me and in a wheelchair which requires us to choose for me to hike in locations where we can park and she can park, read and feel safe while I hike  during the hour or more I am usually gone.  In defense of the Cultural Center, the director who was present when I was there advised me that there is a process ongoing at this time to hire a part time person to keep the facility open on weekends.  That would be a great improvement.  In the past when I have been in Sandy Hook, I have usually walked at Elliott County Memory Gardens, a cemetery just outside town on Kentucky Route 32 which is an excellent cemetery in which to walk with extensive uphill climbs, good paved roads, and sizeable acreage in order to keep an active walker's attention for an hour or so.  But it is a bit steep in places and some walkers might consider it too much work.  I had hoped for quite some time to find the gate at the Cultural and Heritage Center open so Candice could wait for me in the parking lot while I hiked the trails at the center.  

Photo above by Laurel Gorge Cultural Heritage Center/Facebook.
 

The trails at the center contain several, perhaps eight or nine miles of interconnected trails which are marked as mild to moderate.  I would agree with the designations in general but the first half mile or so of the main trail is perhaps a bit too mild with some elevated wooden walkways and several pit stops built into the walkways with board seats in opposite corners for people to rest.  But beyond the spot where the walkways end, the trails are truly moderate and some people might consider them to be at the top end of that designation and tending toward tough which is fine with me.  I like that kind of hike.  Those trails wind past several rock outcroppings  and rock shelters with frequent tree roots, rocks, mild to moderate uphills, and enough difficulty for the average hiker to break a sweat.  Sadly, I didn't have a camera with me and took no photographs of the trails.  I will try to correct that the next time I go there.  Also, the state operated page to which I provided the link above has no pictures either.  The Cultural Heritage Center does operate a Facebook page which has a limited collection of photographs but they are inadequate to fully describe the nature of the trails.  But like many thousands of other such Facebook pages, it is inadequate to fully describe the options available with too little text and too few photographs.  The location would be better served with a professionally maintained website which may well be too expensive for what might be a limited budget.  

While I was at the center, the cultural heritage building was open and the director was present working to set up for a Craft and Vendor Fair the following day.  The center is also the location of the Elliott County Historical Society which has a designated space for their meetings and library of materials.  There is a good collection of historical and craft objects in the building including one of the finest copper stills I have ever seen and two excellent large benches made from what appears to have been the same log by the same maker.  The facility is well worth visiting on the days when the building is open and hopefully they will  hire that person to keep it open some limited  number of weekend hours.  I assume you can feel free to park near the gate, walk around it and hike the trails in the daylight hours if you feel safe to leave your car in the somewhat isolated spot.  It is a great place for the moderately experienced hiker to visit.  Despite the quite rocky nature of the area, I don't have much fear of poisonous snakes there because it has been my experience that they tend to move away from areas which have extensive foot traffic as this one does. You should go there sometime soon and enjoy the hike. 

Minnie Adkins Day, July 15, 2023, Sandy Hook, Kentucky

 

Roger D. Hicks & Minnie Adkins

My wife Candice & I traveled to Sandy Hook, Kentucky, in neighboring Elliott County for our second visit to Minnie Adkins Day, an annual one day event which is named for the great Kentucky folk artist Minnie Adkins, whom I have known casually for somewhere near twenty years.  We are  not close friends but whenever I encounter Minnie she always remembers me and refers to me as "the auctioneer".  Minnie Adkins Day is a combination folk art show and sale which draws somewhere in the neighborhood of 75-100 artists and probably close to 1,000 visitors, cum customers, on a good dry day.  Yesterday did not turn out to be a good dry day. Candice & I arrived at about 11am and stayed for about two hours before leaving to go on to Grayson, Kentucky, in neighboring Carter County for lunch at Tres Hermanos Nunez, a pretty fair Mexican restaurant chain in Eastern Kentucky and Southern Ohio.  We decided to leave the event just as we saw ominous clouds moving in from the west and were told by some artists who were watching their cell phones that the weather was headed our way from the Lexington area.  

 

But considering the short time we were there, we  had a most excellent day. I got to see Minnie, converse with her for a short while, (there is always a line to see Minnie, say a few words, and get a photo with her if you want one)  got the photo together which I had never done in our many encounters.  Just in front of me in line to see Minnie was a couple whom I did not recognize but I heard someone refer to the man as Randy Yohe which was a great serendipitous meeting.  Randy is now retired from WSAZ-3 TV in Huntington, West Virginia, and works for West Virginia Public Radio.  I had seen Randy in 1996 when he did a story about me when I was chosen as an Olympic Torch Bearer for the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.  I had carried the torch in Covington, Kentucky, and Randy and his camera person had filmed footage with me at Morehead State University, where I was a non-traditional student at the time, and in Covington where I carried the torch in a driving rain at 10pm.  I had liked Randy a lot at the time, followed his work in a limited way while he was still working at WSAZ, and lost track of him when he retired from there.  I introduced myself to Randy and his wife as soon as I had my brief time with Minnie and we reminisced about the Torch Run, caught up on what both of us had been doing in the past 27 years, made a plan for a possible meeting at another event I will be attending in West Virginia next year, and moved on.  

 

Then I checked in with my friend folk artist Brent Collinsworth who lives in nearby Wolfe County and is also a well respected Kentucky folk artist.  I have several pieces of Brent's work in my collection of folk art and we converse fairly regularly.  But it is always good to make contact with him anytime.   He had a few new pieces which I had not seen but, since I had bought a few from him not long ago during a visit to his home, I never bought any of his work yesterday. The crowd at Minnie Adkins Day is generally too large for old friends to converse with the artists except for a few brief words and I quickly moved on to other encounters with a couple of people I knew and a few I  had never met.  

I also made a point to find another local Elliott County folk artist, Tim Lewis, whose specialty is carved and painted wooden birds.  I had seen one of Tim's birds in a visit to Brent's house a few months ago and, due to having had a flock of relatively rare evening grosbeaks at our house for about two months from early March to early May, I had decided to ask Tim is he would accept a commission to carve and paint me an evening grosbeak.  We worked out the gist of the details but I still need to send Tim some photos of the grosbeaks and pay him for the carving which I will do in a visit to his house in a few days.  Tim's work is fairly well known across Kentucky and the adjoining states and he has a few pieces in regional folk art museums.  

Then I had another very serendipitous meeting with someone I have known on Facebook only for quite a while. Candice had moved around on her own in her power wheelchair and was talking to two women at their booth. They are a mother and daughter from the Elliott County area and do work primarily using found objects. Candice had found a piece she wanted, a nesting hen made from a folding cardboard fried chicken box.  We decided to buy that piece and while I was writing the check for it to the mother, I asked what name I needed to put on the check and the daughter said, "Use mine, Misty Skaggs."  I turned and realized that she was my Facebook contact and said, "My name is Roger Hicks.  Does that mean anything to you?"  Of course it did since we share the same liberal politics in general and have often been found on the same side of Facebook discussions of the seriously destructive problems in the country which have been perpetrated over the last several years by TRAITOR Trump and the Right Wing Radical Repugnican party.  Misty's mother's name is Bonita Parsons and she was the creator of Candice's chicken.  Candice then decided to stay and spend some time talking with Misty and Bonita while I went around to see what else I could see and whom I might meet.  

Then, as I was walking across the field toward more artist's booths, I met a man walking toward the food booths who recognized me from last year at the event where Candice & I bought a piece from him which hangs in our dining area.  Scott McQueen is his name and he is retired from several years as a minister before retiring and becoming a folk artist.  He lives in Alabama and always comes to the Minnie Adkins Day events.  

Then I ran into Tom Clark from Lexington, Kentucky, who used to run a large gallery there and whom I had encountered at several auctions or folk art events.  He was selling a part of his large collection and we talked for a while about several artists and an art dealer we had known in the past. Someone had also heard Minnie refer to me as an auctioneer and pulled me aside to tell me that a young artist at another booth was in the process of becoming an auctioneer and would like to talk to me.  We conversed for a while and I told him what I could about my experiences in running an auction house, conducting several good estate auctions in several Kentucky counties, and one or two firmly held beliefs I have about how auctions should be run, how a good to great auction crew is put together and my favorite little bit of wisdom that "at every auction someone is in charge, either the crowd or the auctioneer and it should never be the crowd."  Then I realized that bad weather was moving in and hurried over to get Candice and leave.  We just got into the van when the rain started coming down and went to Grayson for lunch. Misty Skaggs communicated to me by Facebook today and told me that most of the artists and late staying customers got really wet in a driving rain after we left.  All together it was a great day!