A Kentucky nonprofit recently awarded more than $180,000 in grant funding to over 40 artists and arts organizations to support works that demonstrate feminist expression and promote social change.
The Kentucky Foundation for Women’s 2025 Artist Enrichment grant is supporting artists – including two in Calloway County – who are participating in residencies, developing new techniques or building on existing bodies of work.
Photographer behind Latina migrant portraits wants community members to ‘be curious about each other’
A black and white portrait photo of a Santeria man holding a chicken inspired a young Cintia Segovia Figueroa to pursue a passion for photography and videography – skills that she’s now using to document members of western Kentucky’s migrant labor population and explore the stories behind the workers who split time between their families in Mexico and their farm jobs in the United States.
Segovia Figueroa’s KFW grant-supported project explores the experiences of Latina migrants working in western Kentucky through photos and video interviews. She said this project highlights how these women’s experiences can teach others about empowerment – and also explores how their lives are shaped by their annual migration to the U.S. for work.
“Now my work delves more into identity, so I like to work on themes of how it is to be an immigrant in the U.S.,” Segovia Figueroa said.
When she moved to Calloway County in 2020 to teach at Murray State University, Segovia Figueroa had no idea there was a migrant labor population in the area. Over that summer, she saw people on trucks with leaves and thought they were “giant kale,” but later learned they were farm workers with tobacco leaves. Within a few months, she connected with the farmers and started taking their photos.
For Segovia Figueroa, this work was about connecting with her culture and understanding where these migrant farmers came from. She also wanted to create work to inform her new community about this population of migrant workers that they knew of but had few connections with.
“I wanted to know how these migrant workers perceive their labor and also what is their relationship with their work,” Segovia Figueroa said.
In 2024, she received grant funding from Murray State to go to Mexico and see where these migrant workers live when they’re not working on farms in western Kentucky. While there, she learned that while many women stay behind to lead their communities while the men are away, some of the women also migrate to the U.S. for work each year to make money for their families.
Segovia Figueroa thought spotlighting women migrant workers could help show the value of their work in a space that is traditionally thought to be dominated by men. As an immigrant herself, she also hopes her project will help break negative stereotypes about those who come to the United States for better job opportunities and will show how these workers are still connected to western Kentucky even though they may call another country home.
“I want to engage with those people that don't have a lot of exposure with other immigrants,” Segovia Figueroa said. “I want to just present a point of view about what they do, and maybe beyond [that] a point of connection between people that maybe they have a rural life, and to show how this immigrant person also has a rural life, and they have things in common, and so I'm making work to communicate how we should all be curious about each other and be just open to getting to know each other better.”
She’s planning to have this project displayed in the Murray Art Guild in 2027.
Ceramicist says creating art is ‘a form of communication’
Anne Beyer is a wood-fire ceramic artist and teacher who – according to KFW – is one of the few women in the United States who owns and operates a high-temperature wood kiln to fire her pottery. She uses the kiln to create different patterns on the pieces based on the fire temperature and the oxygen the fire gets from inside the clay.
Beyer has been working with ceramics for 15 years, starting after taking a ceramics class in college. While she was originally studying psychology, one ceramics class led to another – and ultimately led to an art degree. The Calloway County ceramicist makes functional pottery and abstract sculptures.
“I kind of fell in love with clay because it's so tactile. It kind of brings out this younger version of ourselves,” Beyer said. “If you have a little bit of dedication, you can really make anything you want. It's very approachable. It's something that has become extremely important to me.”
Beyer said KFW’s mission also aligns with her work in a male-dominated part of ceramics. She’s using her grant award to purchase heavy duty mold-making material that will allow her to create new, large wall-hanging sculptures.
“I'm drawn to wood firing because it's this natural process, in a lot of ways where you're working with a material that sometimes feels like it has a mind of its own.” Beyer said. “It's very hard to control and a lot of the surface technique has to do with just kind of allowing the natural process, sort of like capturing serendipitous moments in that way.”
Beyer considers education a big part of her mission as an artist. She’s working on a master’s degree in clinical counseling at Murray State University, which she plans to use to help others through art therapy.
“I think making artwork is – on a very base level – a form of communication,” Beyer said. “I wanted to have a broader bandwidth of how I was going to communicate to people, and what next layer of study was going to implement what community needs are.”
Beyer plans to open a gallery and class space in Murray called Centering Clay this spring.
Other Purchase Area artists have also received funding from KFW. Malissa Kano-White is a performing artist in Paducah who was awarded grant funds to support her work on a musical theatre script about social media culture, identity, truth and accountability. Shand Stamper makes contemporary heirloom jewelry and is using grant funds to support her time at a workshop and residency to expand her metalsmithing work for a new body of work.
